


The Light & The Smile

by KoiLungfish



Category: The Transformers (Cartoon Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2018-12-30 05:01:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 31,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12101259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KoiLungfish/pseuds/KoiLungfish
Summary: A group of failed Decepticons is sent to a remedial training base. Unfortunately, something has followed them. All OC cast.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title: The Light & The Smile, chapter 1  
> Author: Koi Lungfish  
> Disclaimer: Based on characters and situations from The Transformers ((c) 1986 Hasbro, Ltd). Used without permission. Text (c) 2006, Koi Lungfish (Mark of Lung. All Rights Reserved.)  
> Continuity: G1 cartoon, pre-Earth. This fic is set about six million years ago, before Cybertron was blown out of orbit, hence there is sunlight and atmosphere. The cast is all fancharacters.  
> Feedback always welcome.

> _"Oh my brother, kneel with me  
>  And share this dream of paradise  
>  Through this cold and freezing night  
>  We will survive"  
>  _ Arena _\- "The City of Lanterns"_
> 
>  

"Eeeh! There's a dead jet in here!"

Useless jumped up at the shout; he hadn't realised there was anyone else in the base. Before he could decide whether to flee, look for a weapon or just hide behind the console cluster in the middle of the room, the shouter stumbled out of the back rooms and into the barrack-room.

"Who the - where did you come from?" Useless yelped. The big Mayhem who'd dragged him here and told him to stay put hadn't mentioned anything about other Seekers. Come to think of it, he hadn't mentioned anything about the place at all.

"Err..." The other didn't seem to want to reply.

"Oh, I get it. You're a reject."

"I am not!"

"Then why're you all faded out?"

"What, like you?"

"Yeah." Useless shrugged. He thought to lower his weapons, then remembered he didn't have any, which was probably a good thing, since he was too low on fuel to power them anyway. "I'm a reject. Everyone calls me Useless."

"They call me that too."

"No, I mean as a name."

"Oh. I'm Pariah - and there's a dead body back there! Did you put it there?"

"No, I only just got here." That wasn't entirely true; he'd been standing around for at least three breems.

"What're you doing here?"

"No idea. You?"

Pariah shrugged. "This huge Mayhem dragged me out of the base yesterday and hauled me all the way over here. I was looking around and there it - there you are."

"Me too. Except for the dead body."

"Yeah," Pariah said, looking around a bit helplessly. "I was looking for the recharge berths - or a refuelling station. Have you seen any? Or just some fuel? Anywhere?"

"Nah. I just got dragged in here and told to sit down and wait."

"What for?"

"How am I supposed to know? Nobody told me. I don't even know where this place is." Useless sat down. It had been a long flight from his last base, all the night and most of the evening before. "You don't suppose they've dumped us out here to starve, do you? I hear they do things like that to Decepticons like us."

"Decepticons like you maybe. I'm different."

Useless could only look bemused at that. Pariah was, apart from clumps of thin, shiny, iridescent wires sprouting from helm-sides, completely identical to him. They were both standard-model Seekers, scuffed, dented, dingy and almost completely grey, although his armour was of a lighter shade. He could just make out the last remains of chipped, shakily applied decorative paint on Pariah's face. "Err ... different?" He wasn't seeing it, well, apart from the helm-wire and the face-paint.

"I'm a female."

"Oh ... but ... you're a jet."

"I'm a female jet!"

"What, like - oh, you're a triple-changer? You can turn into a female Autobot, for a disguise?" Useless hadn't heard of anyone doing that before, but it sounded like a good idea. Then again, so did getting overcharged the day before unit inspection, so he was never certain of the soundness of his own ideas.

"No!" Pariah snapped. "I'm a _female jet!_ "

Useless was still trying to work out what that meant when the barrack-room door opened, and more Seekers came in - more grey, sheepicron-faced, confused reject Seekers, herded by yet another huge, horrible, Pretender-shelled Mayhem. It occurred to Useless that he could ask the Mayhem what was going on, and why they were there, but before he got half-way through putting together a question that wasn't _that_ likely to get his face dented, the Mayhem had snorted contemptuously, shouldered his long-pronged spear and left. The barrack-room door shut behind him with a distinctly locked sound. Then there was just a throng of voices and whining and hands raised in question. Useless stood, afraid he'd be buried in the movement of bodies.

Then the door opened again, and a Seeker who wasn't grey came in. He was royal blue, with bright green trim and highlights so yellow they were almost painful to look at.

"Hey there," he said with a broad smile, in a voice so confident that everyone stopped talking and turned to him. "Well, good to see so many have arrived. I'm your new commander here, and I'm absolutely certain you're going to be the greatest crew I've commanded. I'm sure you're all wondering what's going on and, let me tell you, I won't leave you wondering for long. Let me introduce myself, I'm _AAAARGH!_ "

"That's a funny name," someone said, before the confident Seeker toppled forwards with an agonised expression on his face. The door, which Useless now realised hadn't closed, did so behind the most enormous Hunter he'd ever seen: a huge rust and singe-coloured brute who stood so tall in the low barrack-room that the top of his coned head was barely two hand-spans from the ceiling. Useless was, for a rare moment, in no doubt - this towering Decepticon was the cause of their new commander's collapse.

"Get up, you waste of hybridised xenotech!"

The speaker wasn't the giant. Useless tracked down from the impassive char-black face, past shoulders broader than his own wingspan and wings broader than he was tall, down the scorch-dark cockpit to another head, a new head with a gloss-black and featureless face. The speaker was half the height of the Hunter, barely vents-high to a standard-build, sharp-edged and compact, all non-standard angles and antique outline. Its finish was gleaming black, like oil without the sheen, slashed with the purple of the imperial blazon. The head was smooth - no sensors on the sides, no mouth, no nose, no moving parts - just a monoptic band, a smooth sensor-crest on the crown of the head and a vertical groove running up the forehead to connect the two. The stance was ungiving, feet planted in unyielding authority, the wings spread full wide, one hand firmly gripping the handle of a powerful shock-baton.

"Blast me, it's a little Windling," someone in the crowd giggled.

"Who said that?" The Windling's voice was sharp and focused. Useless felt himself standing a little more to attention at the sound of it, drawing his wings back in submission, preparing to flinch. "Started _already_ , Trippin'?" There wasn't any doubt. The Windling became a blur of oil and blazon and there was a crash and a squawk and a tumbling motion. Then the Windling was on the other side of the room, standing over a fallen reject who was flapping his hands ineffectively and, Useless was amazed to hear, still giggling. The Windling grabbed the reject firmly by the throat, hauling him into a sitting position, and then struck him soundly around the head a few times with the baton. Useless winced at the sound. That baton sounded heavy, and the dents it left looked painful. He wondered how long it would take for him to end up on the receiving end.

Useless heard something behind him, turned to see the giant hauling the confident Seeker upright and shoving him back into the crowd, then turned back to see the giggler being pushed in the same direction. He pulled his wings in and waited for the crash. Someone banged into him from one side, another from the front, then, like ball bearings in a shaken crate, the crowd of rejects settled.

"Now, you shiftless sons of semaphore signals can stand to, shut up and _listen_ to me," the Windling ... well, Useless knew an order when he heard one. "I _am_ your commander. I am Base Commander Misdemeanour. You will _address_ me as Sir, and you will _salute_ when you are spoken to. _You_ are the biggest collection of wastrels, layabouts and flat-out drains on the resources of the Empire that I have had the bad luck to set my targeting sensors on. _You_ are all here for one reason. Do any of you know what that is?"

There was a silence of exchanged glances and reluctant head shaking.

" _You_ are all here because you are _hopeless_. You cannot fight. You cannot shoot. Some of you, I am informed, cannot _fly_. You are the _laughing-stocks_ of your units! You are a gaggle of 'bot-brained washouts! You are the slag from the junk off the scrapheap! You are _here_ because the Empire has decided that the unique gift Vector Sigma gave each of you is worth enough for you to get one _final_ chance.

"This is it."

Useless felt a sensation not unlike the fuel curdling in his main tank. _I was expecting to be shot,_ he realised. _I knew they'd do me in soon now, but I thought they'd at least take the trouble to shoot me._

"Despite the time and resources that have been wasted on your pathetic existences, despite the training you didn't pay attention to, despite the punishment details and the attempts at deserting and the utterly laughable attempts at hiding from the Mayhems, you all have a shred of value left. _Someone_ has calculated your remaining value down to the last drop of energon - and it will _be_ your last drop of energon."

_We're going to starve,_ Useless thought. That explained the lack of recharge berths.

"There is _one_ energon dispenser in this base. It is the _only_ source of energon here. Today you will be installed with a _device_. It will let you use the dispenser. It will count how much energon you get from the dispenser. It knows how much energon you have left. When you have had it all, there will be _no more_. You will _starve_. Unless you can prove yourselves, you will _die_."

Someone whimpered.

"Shut up, Faintheart," Misdemeanour ordered. The whimper stopped with a frightened _eek!_ "You will _stay_ here until Brickhouse here takes you to the technician. After that, you will be allotted _detail_. The control room is _off-_ -limits to you. This base is in the _middle_ of nowhere. The nearest habitation is the City of Lanterns and it is _out_ of your flight-range now. You have _nowhere_ to go. Are there any _questions?_ "

There was a murmur of fear, rising into a babble of fright. The blue Seeker's loud, confident voice cut through the racket, asking, "What the hail-and-high-wind am I doing here?"

"You, Gloryhog, are all mouth and _no_ thrusters," Misdemeanour replied. "You have talked yourself into so many holes I can only believe someone replaced your glossa with a _shovel_. You have attempted to pass yourself off as a _High_ Commander to a base sergeant who had known you since creation. You have deserted _five_ times. You _refused_ the right to trial by combat. You chose to _beg_ for your life rather than to fight for it. _That_ is why you are here. You are a coward and a fool and a failure. You are the _same_ as everyone here."

"But - but - but," Gloryhog started to protest. Looking at him again, Useless saw that his colour was washed-out and fading, that his fine finish was the last gasp before the grey came, and with the grey, the same fear and bewilderment that marked them all as rejects. Useless felt no sympathy, not even a shred of joy at seeing someone lingering on the brink of the fall down to his own level, only a dull sense of likeness; _you and I, we are very much the same._

"Silence." It was an order, and it was obeyed. It was an easy order; it was ones like _charge_ and _hit the target_ and _attack that Guardian_ that mechanisms like him and Gloryhog and all the others had a problem with. "Are there _any_ questions?" There was silence. Misdemeanour glowered at them all, stabbing each with a long glare that seemed to pierce through the armour and into the core, to say _I know you; you're a failure._ "Dismissed!"

_Where to?_ Useless wondered, and then Pariah, whom he'd forgotten, suddenly exclaimed "Sir!"

She forgot to salute. Misdemeanour pointed the baton at her, a bright arc split the room, there was a smell of ozone, and Pariah folded over with a scream. Misdemeanour strode over, parting the reject crowd like a turbofox splitting a herd of sheepicrons, and kicked the fallen jet hard enough to dent her side.

"Yes, Pariah?"

"The-the ... there's a dead jet in one of the back rooms. Sir." She hauled herself upright enough to manage a wobbly salute. Useless saw Misdemeanour shake her head in exasperation. Brickhouse broke his silence and coughed out three hard, barking sounds, probably a laugh, although Useless wasn't sure.

"A _dead_ jet? Well, show me where he is," Misdemeanour ordered. "Faintheart, Scapegoat, Dullwretch, with me. Brickhouse, take batch one for installation. The rest of you - I _said_ dismissed."

Useless stood, his mouth a little open, watching Misdemeanour and Pariah go. He had enough time to wonder what he was going to do now before Brickhouse spoke.

"Gloryhog, Sunbeam, Useless, Trippin', Whineswift, with me." His voice was deep and harsh, like lead going through a grating machine.

"But I don't know where repair bay is! I don't have a map, nobody told me to get one! I don't know..."

_That must be Whineswift_ , Useless thought, trying to keep step with a glum-faced yellowish Seeker who fell in beside him. Worry turned into a lead weight that settled in his fuel tank as he followed the unheeded complaints out of the barrack-room and downwards, into the deeper dark of a reject's terminal station of failure.

 

* * *

 

The repair bay was enormous after the low-ceilinged barrack-room, and although the only light came from small spot-lamps on cable hangers, it seemed a bright relief from the underworld gloom of the junction-punctured, directionless tunnels. The bright-lance beams of faintly greenish light illuminated repair plinths edged with equipment banking and a Seeker of non-standard build, olive drab with 'bot-blue optics and the disassociated smile of the breaker-technician. The lamps deluminated any far wall, so that the rejects stood within a cavernous dark.

"How many arrived?" the butcher-smiling jet asked Brickhouse immediately. "Have we got them all this time?"

"No. Mayhems said four resisted. Three dead. One promoted."

"Oh, good. It is pleasant when they get away like that."

Brickhouse turned to the five rejects. "This is Overhaul. Chief technician here. Only one. Do what he says." Useless admitted to himself he would have done anyway. Overhaul looked the type to keep laser-scalpels up his gauntlets.

"Yes, I'm Overhaul. You five lie on these plinths. Just a quick system scan and then we'll fit you up and you can get lost." Useless did as he was told, lying on the nearest plinth. The silent yellowy Seeker immediately took the one on his left, the middle one. He saw Trippin' - he could just make out the remains of orange and green colouration - further off. When he turned to his right, he saw Gloryhog. The liar who still had his colours caught his gaze and gave him a confident, self-assured smile. For some reason, Useless felt a surge of queasy fear and uncertainty.

The bright beams of the overhead scanners passed back and forth across their bodies. Useless remained as still as he could, but every time he tried to stay perfectly still, he suddenly felt a terribly urge to move, just twitch a finger or shift a gear system. The first time he did that, Overhaul pushed a button and Useless got a nasty shock. He managed to stay still after that.

After an interminable pause of dark ceilings and wheeling lights, the scanners retreated into the upper shadows.

"Gloryhog, turn your power-cell off," Overhaul commanded from behind his console. "Useless, stop twitching. Trippin', stop giggling. Whineswift, if I hear another peep out of you, I'll press that button again." Whineswift protested, and got a shock for his trouble. He subsided sullenly. "Trippin', shut up. Gloryhog, power-cell, _off!_ "

Useless turned to look at Gloryhog, and heard the yellowish Seeker sitting up to take a look too. Gloryhog's expression had turned to discomfort, like someone who had their wing stuck in a door.

" _Gloryhog!_ " Overhaul was shouting now. On the other side of the room, Brickhouse shifted with imminent brutality.

"I can't!" Gloryhog exclaimed suddenly. "I can't turn it off!"

Overhaul simmered down immediately, and rechecked his console. "Can't? Connectors are fine."

"Plug this lot. Fix him later," Brickhouse opined as Overhaul came out from behind the hook-curve of the equipment bank to examine Gloryhog more closely.

"Won't take a breem, Brick," Overhaul replied. Useless looked over at the Hunter, then saw the yellowish Seeker, sitting upright with a sad, tense look on his face. Somewhere behind him, Trippin' giggled. Useless looked back at Gloryhog, now staring rigidly at the ceiling with the expression of one deeply embarrassed, as Overhaul prodded around inside his cockpit. Strangely, Useless felt a surge of that same embarrassment. He looked back between his air-vents to see if Brickhouse had moved, and saw the yellow Seeker wincing, his dim energy-field cringing into a violent blush.

"Projector!" Useless exclaimed, turning back to Gloryhog so fast his neck-struts made unhappy cracking sounds. The word almost jumped out of his vocaliser with the realisation. "You're projecting your emotions!"

"That he is," Overhaul replied, blue optics peering at him from under the brim of his helm. "Course, he hasn't got any control over what he does, so he just projects whatever he's feeling, and constantly, which is why you're feeling so embarrassed. Hmm." The technician poked and prodded around a bit more, before there was an audible _snap_ and Gloryhog flinched. Useless' sense of embarrassment vanished immediately. "Sunbeam, Useless, do you feel embarrassed now?"

"No," the yellowish Seeker replied.

_What a name,_ Useless thought. "Not now."

"Ah, that's got it then. Reset it. Nothing wrong with it, just been running too long. You need to do regular calibration drills, Gloryhog."

"Yes sir," Gloryhog replied dully, trying to mask an embarrassment all too clear from his wrinkling, squirming aura.

_And after he tried to convince us he was commander here, too!_ Useless thought, indignant. Then Overhaul was advancing on him with a filter-shaped thing and an intent look on his face, and Useless just tried to keep still.

 

* * *

 

The corpse was exactly where she'd last seen it, lying flat on its back on the floor. It was a standard-build Hunter: not quite as big as Brickhouse but close, with outsized engines built into its down-position wings - stonking great turbofans that ran from shoulder to heel-nozzle that had to provide more kick that a blast from the High Commander's cannon - a noseconed head, unchamfered lines and heavy armour.

"He must've been dead for some time," she said, more to herself than anyone else. Rust-spots were forming on the corpse's torso and veins of verdigris ran up the outside of a thigh, rotting flecks of colour into the char-dark grey of dead metal.

"It wasn't me! I didn't kill him!" one of the other rejects protested. "I didn't do it! I wasn't here!"

_That_ must _be Scapegoat,_ Pariah thought. That meant the darker standard-build with the sullen, stupid expression was probably Dullwretch, and the pallid, flinching Hunter was Faintheart. He shifted from foot to foot, whimpering at the sight of his darker double dead on the floor. _Definitely Faintheart. Well, they certainly fit the names they've been given._

Scapegoat was still protesting. Misdemeanour jabbed him in the costa with the baton, and he curled up on the floor making pained noises. Pariah didn't blame him.

Misdemeanour looked down at the dead jet for a few moments, then strode towards it and raised her baton. "Get up, dead jet," she said, swinging the baton down and shocking the corpse in its chest.

The corpse sat up screaming.

Pariah jumped back in surprise. Faintheart wailed, wobbled at the knees and tried to stuff his hands in his mouth. Scapegoat made a sickly gurgling sound. Dullwretch just stood sullenly still. As quickly as life seemed to have come, it seemed gone again: the corpse moved no more.

"I said _up_ ," Misdemeanour repeated, giving the baton a light swing. Slowly and with a strange deliberateness of movement, the dead jet got to his feet and then stopped in perfect stillness again. "Tell them who you are."

The dead jet turned its head just enough to look at her, and at the baton. Pariah saw his optics weren't quite black, but that there was just the faintest hint of a red glow, so dim it was little more than a suggestion. She wondered how he could see, or if he even needed to.

"I'm Deadjet. I've been here four diuns." Every word was deliberate, that same considered precision. "I've survived by conserving fuel. I advise you to do the same." Then, off: the optics returned to black, no more suggestion of life.

"What he didn't _say_ is that he's been lying deactivated on the floor for three of those four diuns," Misdemeanour continued. "He's _not_ dead, but he's _not_ far off. Pariah, check on him every day. If he won't move when you hurt him then report to me."

"Why me, sir?" She saluted. It seemed the safest way.

"Because I _say_ so, you over-decorated trinket. Now, dismissed!"

Faintheart almost ran, Scapegoat scuttling after him still hunched over in pain. Dullwretch stared blankly at Deadjet for a few moments, then left, bumping into Misdemeanour and getting a whack to the thigh for not paying attention. Pariah looked back at Deadjet, standing perfectly still.

"How am I supposed to know if you're dead or not?" she asked, more to herself than to him. She got no reply, so she went back into the barrack-room.

Misdemeanour was gone, no doubt to prepare whatever details they were going to have to work themselves to death with. Mood hanging glum at the thought, Pariah wondered whether there'd be anything useful for them to do - target shooting or drills - or whether it would be one long slog of punishment detail after punishment detail until they dropped dead from starvation, one after another. She looked at her new comrades. Faintheart, the only one she recognised, was sitting in a corner between the door and the wall to her right with his hands drawn up to his chin, fingers almost knotted together. _Guess he doesn't deal with dead bodies very well. No wonder he's here._ She couldn't pick out Dullwretch. He could have been any of three standard-builds sitting together around the central console, all staring at blank screens with blanker expressions. The rest of the rejects stood or sat, staring with boredom or despair at the consoles around the wider left side of the room. One, a pale standard Seeker with his wings down-position against his thighs, was rocking back and forwards in his chair and whimpering softly. The sight alarmed her, stirring up a feeling of revulsion and terror deep in her internals - a fear, perhaps, of becoming like him, and perhaps of the vicious beating from Brickhouse or someone else that such a sound had to herald.

She sat down at a terminal at the wall on her right, midway between the door and the backrooms were Deadjet was. Faintheart crawled over to her, apparently too wobbly on his feet to stand. Up close, he was the dirty grey of tarnished pale metal, excepting his dark face and hands and drab, toneless trim. He folded up at her feet, still whimpering, and looked at her pleadingly. _What does he want? What is he doing? Does he think I'm going to help him? Eeeh, what a wimp!_

"Get lost," she snapped, and turned away to stare at the inactive console.

 

* * *

 

Useless' ingestion conduit hurt, which wasn't surprising. He'd twitched three times when Overhaul was putting the filter-thing in, causing the technician to poke him with his laser-scalpel. _I am so useless, I can't even lie still,_ he thought glumly. _No wonder I ended up here._ Brickhouse was ostensibly leading them back to the barrack-room, but he'd walked off with such long strides they'd all fallen behind. Gloryhog was somewhere behind him, probably wallowing in his embarrassment. He didn't know where the others were and didn't care - it was a frank relief to get away from them. A chemical odour clung to Trippin', an unpleasant one, and Whineswift was just plain aggravating. Useless had to wonder how he'd avoided being beaten to death by better Decepticons.

"C-can we go back, please?" a soft voice asked behind his wing.

Useless found Sunbeam had crept up behind him, looking at him pleadingly. "I'm not stopping you from going anywhere."

"Well, I - I don't know my way around here, and if I go off on my own I'll never find anywhere." He hung his head and wings. "I'm sorry."

It had never occurred to Useless that someone might get really lost here, lost underground in the dark. He considered his options. _Well, what else am I going to do? Go back and watch someone get thumped, or get thumped myself? Wander around and get lost?_ "Fine. We'll go back. But why do you want to?"

They turned and headed back down the darkened corridors, unlit passages only defined by the single lights at the junctions and the warning scrape of wall on wing-edge. The only sense of direction was from the line of lights rising back to the barrack-room and the unlit passageway down to the repair bay. There was no difference between the main corridor and its offshoots. Blue and purple and off-white lights shafted into the darkness ahead and behind and on either side, all corridors sloping up or down, all ceilings low, all walls barely far enough apart for the two rejects to walk wingtip-to-wingtip. Useless wondered how Brickhouse could get around without smashing into things.

"I - I have a little glitch."

"So do I. His name's Gundeck," Useless quipped, then realised Sunbeam had no idea who Gundeck, the latest sergeant to make his life misery, actually was. Sunbeam's gloomy expression and dejection-slumped wings didn't flicker. "All right, all right, what's your malfunction?"

"I can't turn my power on. It just comes on sometimes, when I ... when it does."

"Huh. Mine won't come on either, and when it does, I can't turn it off. I've got the worst of you and the worst of Gloryhog at the same time." Useless tried to laugh at himself, but couldn't. There wasn't much funny about the situation. All he felt was a dull, heavy, trapped sensation of his life being measured in energon, and shortening, drop by drop. _Each step down,_ he thought, _is another step closer to death. Each step up takes me in the same direction._

"Oh dear! I _am_ sorry!" Sunbeam looked at him with an expression of such pathos Useless was taken aback. Surprised, he laughed out loud for what felt like the first time in a vorn.

_This jet is such an Autobot! He's sorry for every little thing. I hope I'm not like that,_ Useless thought. By this time the dark corridors had narrowed to the near-black tunnel that led to the repair bay, the last light the pale pool at final junction, and then the faint greenish shimmer from the control panel by the door. They walked without speaking through the black place, Useless wondering if there were other passages opening beside them, open spaces they couldn't see or feel. The only sound was the clank of their pedes, the quieter _tang_ of their heel-nozzles, and the dim, distant rumble of the ancient machines far below. The nearest lights were their optics shimmering a faint red on the edges of each other's vision.

"You're early, Brick," Overhaul said as they went in. He had his back to them. It occurred to Useless that _real_ Decepticons would probably shoot him in the back or something, but, well, they weren't real Decepticons and by the time he'd finished thinking that Overhaul had turned around. "Oh. What do you want?"

"I've got a little glitch," Sunbeam said, almost wringing his hands.

"I know, I've seen your record," Overhaul replied dismissively, setting out a tray of five new filter-things. "Calibration drills, that's what you need. But do it outside, in case you get it wrong."

"C-can't you do anything? I've asked and asked and nobody can help me!" Sunbeam's voice wobbled, almost reaching a sob.

"I told you, calibration drills. You can't expect something like a Sigma-gifted power cell to work without careful calibration and practice." Overhaul looked sternly at Sunbeam from under the brim of his helm, then sent the same look at Useless. "Same goes for you."

"Please?" Sunbeam wavered. "I - I promise, I won't do it again."

"Do what?" Useless asked, a breath of worry tickling his wings.

"Do - it," Sunbeam replied weakly.

"Overhaul ... " Useless didn't really know what he was asking, other than that the senior officer must have some way of stopping Sunbeam before he started sobbing openly, even it was throwing a sharp object at him. Useless wasn't sure he could stand the sight of another Seeker crying without a few good Decepticons to kick him in the head until he shut up.

Overhaul gestured with a scalpel. The light-blade was screamingly bright in the dimness, edge-sharp reflections flicking over the equipment. "Out."

Useless knew what he was supposed to do now. He was supposed to crumple up and crawl away, like he always did. He was supposed to go back to the barrack-room and wait for whatever was going to happen to them to happen. A claustrophobic sort of feeling closed around him, the way it always did just before he did something stupid, like trying to desert, or hide under the floor-panelling. He looked at Sunbeam, who looked back at him with an expression of quite pathetic helplessness, still wringing his hands. _Oh, what the smelter. I'm about to die anyway, I might as well do_ something _interesting to deserve it. Perhaps they'll even shoot me._

"I'll sort something out," he heard himself say to Sunbeam.

He walked over to Overhaul and put a hand on his shoulder, pulling him around. Overhaul looked at him in complete surprise, and he just had time to hear Sunbeam say, "Oh, _thank_ you!" before Overhaul tackled him to the floor and a blinding flash of light and heat turned the dark bay into bright day.

There was a light like the midday sun shining on his unshielded optics, a heat like noon on the equatorial barrens. It crisped his sensors, made the crystals of his optics swim in shimmers. Useless felt delicate wiring fry, his wings spasming in the sudden heat. Light so strong it felt like a solid wave moved through the room. Everything glowed scalding orange and the ceiling was a copper mirror filling the air with flaring, blasting brightness. Then there were only the phantom lights of afterimage and an overloaded visual sensor array.

"Oh! Oh, I'm so sorry!" Sunbeam wailed. "I didn't mean to do it! I'm sorry!"

Useless felt something sharp slice across his cheek, and yelped. He couldn't see what Overhaul was doing, but he felt the technician climb off him.

"That was extremely stupid, and I'm talking to both of you," the technician replied. "If this were any other place, I'd have sliced your throats for it. However, this _is_ a remedial facility and you _did_ actually try to do something, rather than sitting around like corpses waiting to be broken, so all I'm going to do is dock a quarter-cube from your energon ration. Both of you."

A numb feeling clamped onto Useless as Sunbeam helped him up. He didn't really hear the other reject's wittering apologies. All that was in his mind was that dull, heavy, trapped sensation of his life being measured in energon and shortening, step by step. He stumbled along, leaning on Sunbeam a little, until his vision cleared.

"Hey," he said, "what the smelt did you do back there?"

"I ... I have a little glitch," Sunbeam winced.

"You mean your power went off."

"Yes?" Sunbeam sounded as if he hoped to be contradicted.

"And that's what that flash was?"

"Yes."

"Can you do all the time?"

"No. It just goes off ... sometimes. When I smile." His voice was mournful.

"Oh. How much energon did you burn?"

"I'm not sure."

"Oh." He looked around. There was darkness, and lit junctions ahead and behind and to either side. "Where are we?"

"I'm not sure."

"Smelt!"

 

* * *

 

Trippin' watched his pedes as he walked. He had tricky feet, or so he told them, since whenever he took his optics off them for a microbreem they decided to do the air-waltz and down he went, flat on his cockpit.

"You," he told his right pede, "are a dis-o-bee-dee-ansh no-good smoke-vent-in-dragging ... whatever it was Bombjack said ... an' you," he told his left pede, "are gonna be smel-el-elted into make shell cash-cas-cus ... whatever Powerstab said." Insomuch as he was focused on anything, he was looking for a place, a quiet place to sit. "Someone always interrupts us," he told his pedes, not really noticing when his right wingtip dragged along the wall. Metal screeched and sparks flew, sensor-tips were scraped raw, but Trippin' was too busy concentrating putting one foot in front of the other to notice.

"Someone always interrupts," he said again, waving a finger in the air. That caught his attention, and he stopped, leaning backwards to stare at his finger, and then up at the junction-light above him. "Ooh. _Purple_." The edge of the light was almost ultraviolet, which showed up on his scrambled sensorium as a winking, smiling glow. Trippin' stared at the purple light until he was sure he could see the back of his optics. "There weren' any _purple_ lights in Kzng ... Kzne ... where'er I was this morning." Then, vision swimming with phantom smiling ceiling-lights, he ambled on, deeper into the corridors.

As he watched his walking feet, he began to stumble upon bits of scrap on the floor. First they were tiny pieces, no more than the odd loose panel, then broken plates and tangles of cabling, and then whole segments of wall and ceiling. "'s a right mess down here. Nobody's been clee-clur-taking the mess away. Bad! Bad! 's gonna be double detail for someone. Hah. No' me this time. Not gonna do no more detail." He shook his finger at his left pede as he stepped over a fallen wall-support. "I'm not gonna do no more detail. I've had ennu-enf-too much. I'm gonna siddown for a while, an' nobody gonna find me."

In the gloom, he kicked something, and it skittered away into the darkness. "Blast me, 's a cleaning drone. Whassat doing lying around? 's supposed to get taken away by the others. Hnh. Bye-bye, little drone. Nobody cares 'bout you. Nobody cares now you're dead. Hah! No computer sees you're dead, so no computer gonna see me here too. 's good."

His pedes encountered things that did not move. He looked up. The dim light of the nearest junction showed a cave-in, a heap of panels and beams and junk that had spilled in through a hole and settled. "Hah! Some base. 's falling apart. Still, nobody's come here for a while. 's a good place to stop and siddown."

He parked his aft on a girder, leant back against a hawser of cables thicker than his waist, and propped his feet up on another dead cleaning drone. "King of the hill, 's me. Hah! King of the junk heap. Commander Junk! Heh."

Comfortable atop his pile of scrap, Trippin' held a hand out in front of himself and frowned at it. "Siddown, yeah, in-drag-vent..." he muttered. His mind and voice ceased rambling as he concentrated on the only thing that could catch his attention any more. A gleam formed in his palm, and rose, grew to become a sphere. The ball of light began to dim, hardening into a sphere from which a thin wisp of gas was starting to escape. Trippin' rattled his wings, mentally fatigued by the simple exertion of his Sigma power. "Smoke for Commander Junk, hah. 's too good for Autoshmurbles." He raised the sphere towards his face and snuffed eagerly, shivering his wings as the scent sent his mind off on strange eddies of thoughtlessness, away from the dark and the junk and the failure.

There were footsteps in the dark.

"'s not my feet," Trippin' muttered, checking that his pedes hadn't in fact wandered off when he wasn't looking. They were still there. "Who's walking in the dark?" he called, but there was no reply.

The steps picked up, quicker, closer.

Trippin' peered into the dim light, vision awash with smiling crinkling shapes, and saw a soft-edged silhouette.

The figure came closer, sharp wing-edges cutting the dim light away to make a crisp shape. Trippin' looked up at the Seeker, all coloured in warmth and light, all amber and ivory, glowing like an autumn sunset over white hills. A feeling like acceptance swept over him, a soft warm feeling like standing in a sunbeam.

He looked up into a friendly smile and was utterly lost.

 

* * *

 

"This way?"

"Uh ... maybe..." Useless, much as he hated to admit it, was completely lost. Sunbeam had given up right from the start, and they had been wandering the darkened corridors without any sense of direction for what felt like joors. Useless discovered his internal chronometer, neglected, had turned prophet and died from lack of fuel.

They stood at a junction beneath an evening-blue light, trying to decide which way to go. They'd turned around so many times that neither of them was sure which corridor was the one they'd come from in the first place. The blue light soaked them, as constant and unbreaking as the darkness of the corridors. It had turned Sunbeam temporarily green. Useless looked down at himself, at the azure gleaming in the dimness. He'd been a colour somewhat like this, until the grey came and pulled him down into this dark place. He'd had wings so blue he merged with the cloudless sky, so handsome and so clean a colour, so proud to carry the sky on his skin. In the remembering light, the enamel-rich colour and sheen lived again on his scraped-raw armour. He held his hands up to the light, dipping them in teal radiance, and watching as the light dripped down the etchings on his forearms, little tongues of gas-blue light licking his elbows.

He snatched his hands away from the light, thrusting his arms out into the darkness and staring until he was quite certain they were still grey - the same drab, dingy grey as all the other rejects - which was a disappointing relief.

There were footsteps, several feet coming. Useless looked up. Sunbeam looked at him. Useless wondered why he'd ended up saddled with a hanger-on. Usually he was the one doing the hanging. The footsteps approached, resolved, and the walkers came into view. It was Brickhouse and another batch of rejects.

"Sir!" Useless saluted, mindful of what happened to those didn't.

"Don't salute. I'm a sergeant," Brickhouse replied.

"Sorry sir. We got lost. Which way is the barrack-room from here?"

"Fall in."

So Useless fell in, and Sunbeam tagged behind, walking so close his pedes kept stubbing on Useless' heel-nozzles. Useless found himself wingtip-to-wingtip with Pariah.

"Hello again."

"Oh, it's you." She didn't sound impressed.

"What happened with the dead jet?"

"He's not dead," she replied.

"He _is_ ," wailed a voice from behind.

"Oh, shut up Faintheart," Pariah grumbled. She turned to Useless again. "I've acquired a tagalong. He won't leave me alone."

"Me too," Useless said, jabbing a thumb over his wing at Sunbeam. They passed through a pool of light, this one green, unusually. Useless was starting to feel like there was something he'd missed - besides the usual half of everything that went past his wingtips - something about the lights he should have noticed. He looked up at the light as they went under it. It was a round lamp, set right into the ceiling. When it shone straight into his optics, he felt almost like he was looking up a deep, green-filtered tunnel, up at Homestar itself.

"What happened to your face?" Pariah asked. "You're dripping."

"I know. I upset Overhaul," Useless said, wiping trickling internal fluids from his cheek. Already the scalpel-cut was encrusted with a mixture of drying fluids and busy picomeds. "He docked me and Sunbeam a quart-cube."

"Eeeh!" Pariah suddenly looked scared. "The-they can take our energon away?"

"Yeah, seems so." He tried to check the internal filter, but found he didn't know how to access it. "How much do you have?"

"Probably not much. You?"

"Probably not much either. Less now."

"Me neither," said Sunbeam from behind them, eager to join in the conversation. Then there was a pool of white light, and the door to the barrack-room. Useless was glad to be inside. Despite the low ceilings and the inward-slanting walls, it was the best-lit room on the base so far, and it was starting to feel a little like home to him.

Brickhouse called out five more, and then he was gone again.

Pariah looked at Useless, then at Faintheart, who was lingering at her wingtip. She looked back to Useless and asked, "You want to see a dead jet?"

 

* * *

 

The base computer interrupted Misdemeanour in the middle of fine-tuning the detail roster.

"Sluggish brute of an idiot box," she muttered as the machine informed her it thought it has lost a reject. _['Haul?]_

_[Missy?]_

_[Check our new intake and see if there's anyone whose brain can go into this moronic failure of technology we have to rely on.]_

_[Soon as I'm done with the filters, Missy.]_

By the time she closed radio contact, the computer had finished re-checking its logs and decided that, yes, there were only twenty-one rejects instead of twenty-two. She commanded it to bring up the omni-level readout with reject and staff transponder markers, and sat back, tapping her fingers on the chair-arms, to wait.

As the computer worked, its tiny brain sweltering with overload, she stared impatiently around the dim control room, held in a constant bluish twilight she found the most comfortable of lights. It reminded her of battlefield haze, back then, when the big guns had been solid-state machines with barrels like city towers, and the city towers turned in greenish spirals through the hazy skies of the hive-cities. Back then, when the night sky was this smoky blue lingering always on the edge of real darkness, and smog shrouded out the stars. Back then, yes, when the day sky was a flat sheet of grimy brass that turned stinking and yellow when the rains came. Back then, when the battles were between hordes, not armies, and the enemy was without name or number, and the sky belonged to the twisted ships.

The computer nudged her with sigils, changing the layout projected over the blank keys to show her that it had compiled its display.

She found Brickhouse and Overhaul first, crisp bright markers in main corridor and bay. _That's Brick with batch three ... Deadjet where he always is ... Gloryhog on level one-down, apparently lost. When are these idiots going to learn to synch a map? That's batch two in the barrack-room, and there's Useless and Sunbeam with them, plus the batch four, plus Clodpole from batch five. We're four down, so yes, that's twenty-two with Deadjet ... who's missing? Whineswift's on level plus-two ... Trippin'. It had to be him._

A demand to the computer to locate Trippin's transponder was met with an apology that he was not to be seen.

"I know that, you carbon-hulled lump of organic technology!" She kicked it in Just That Spot, and the display fritzed for a moment. She demanded the computer recall Trippin's last recorded position, and sat back to wait with even less patience.

_[Brick, you're shedding rejects all over the place.]_

_[They're slow.]_

_[We've lost the chem-head.]_

_[He was in batch one.]_

_[He's not answering transponder signal.]_

_[Dark Zone?]_

The system records finally brought up Trippin's last known position. Yes, the little gas-addled fool had wandered outside the covered corridors. _[Where else? He couldn't have gotten far enough outside to be out of transponder trace.]_

_[Want me to dump batch three and look for him?]_

_[Negative,]_ Misdemeanour ordered. On one wing, the base was designed to chew up rejects and swallow them whole. On the other wing, Trippin' was a chemical addict with an in-built supply. Ailerons said level flying, but nosecone-instinct said going down. What was wrong about it all? She checked the display again. _[Transponder signal cut off before he got out of range, Brick. You get batch three to 'Haul. I'll go see which ceiling fell on the nitwit.]_

_[Nitwit's in batch three.]_

_[Oh, get on with it, Brick.]_

 

* * *

 

"Hey, just checking - everyone knows where the energon dispenser is, right?"

Useless looked around. Gloryhog had just come in, apparently recovered from his mortification. He didn't reply to the liar, not knowing the answer, but he waited to see if anyone else did.

Nobody replied. One of the sullen-faced wretches sitting around the central console looked up at Gloryhog, then down at the blank screen in front of him. The standard-build with the down-position wings started sobbing. Useless felt a stirring of unsettlement at the sound. He was used to hearing sounds like that broken off under the fists and pedes of the good Decepticons, and to hear it continue unhalted, unshouted-at, unbludgeoned, was like waiting for a blow to come.

"I could use a refuel too," Pariah said. Gloryhog, attention caught, came over. Useless felt a rising sense of infuriation just looking at the liar's confident swagger, the totally lack of worry in his optics, the schmoozing smirk.

"Well, you stick with me and I'll see you right," Gloryhog said, nodding to them and smiling broadly at Pariah. "I may not know where the dispenser is now but rest assured, as soon as I find out, you'll be the first person I tell." Useless wanted to say something, to do something, to bring Gloryhog back down to the same level as him or even lower, if that was possible, but didn't know what.

"Oh really?" Pariah cocked her head at Gloryhog, the shiny wires on her helm flopping about as she did. "On the other thruster, you could go back to polishing your nosecone and leave me alone, you over-chromed ornament." Gloryhog looked like he'd been punched in the face, and Useless got a wicked thrill to see that confident mask crack open over the same troubled, fretting gaze as the rest of them.

"Yeah, sling your skyhook, 'hog," he said, sneering as superiorly as he could manage. He didn't dare poke Gloryhog, although he wanted to badly.

"What're you, reinforcements?" Pariah snapped, rounding on him.

"Hey, you were the one who invited me to look at a corpse," Useless replied stroppily. Out of the corner of his optic, he saw Sunbeam nodding in agreement.

"What corpse? Oh, the dead jet," Gloryhog said, words sounding forced as he tried to keep himself in the conversation. Useless ignored him, but Faintheart whimpered at the mention of the dead body.

"Yeah, the not-so-Deadjet." Pariah smirked a little as Faintheart drew his hands up over his chest. He was a full noseconed head taller than them, and big as an Iaconic. Useless felt a little smile tugging at his mouth. "Deadjet! Deadjet!" Faintheart flinched. "Oh, for Sigma's sake! Why don't you glide off hangarwards and stop leaking in our formation?"

"It-it's dark out there," Faintheart said in a trembling voice. He was as soft-spoken as Sunbeam, and almost teary on top of it. "I don't want to be alone in the dark."

"You're afraid of the dark?" Gloryhog exclaimed, recoiling in mocking shock. "A big skyfreighter like you, afraid of the dark? Well, what a surprise!"

"'hog, shut _up_ ," Useless said with a near-snap in his voice. He was surprised when Gloryhog flinched, and even more surprised by the little thrill that followed his cowed glance. "Yeah, let's take a look at this Deadjet."

"He's out the back. Come on."

Pariah led. Useless followed, Sunbeam still tagging along at his wing. Faintheart followed timidly, trying to sidle up to Pariah but being barged aside by Gloryhog, who eased up against Useless' other wing.

"I thought I told you to go away?" Useless asked.

"Actually, I outrank you. I'm a corporal of the Fleet." He spoke with such confidence, such a flickerless expression, that Useless was convinced. Then he remembered what had happened earlier.

"Smelt-bins you are. If you were a corporal, you wouldn't be here. You're the scrapings under the bottom rung, same as the rest of us." Useless had to speak between his shoulder-vents as he walked through the door and caught a glimpse of Sunbeam nodding in sad agreement behind Gloryhog.

Bitter-mouthed and frowning, the blue-tinged liar shoved past Useless to stand, fists on hips and feet planted wide apart to suggest a semblance of power even if his aura couldn't. "He looks dead enough to me."

Behind them, lingering in the doorway, Faintheart moaned.

"He's alive," Pariah replied, kicking the corpse. It twitched. Faintheart shrieked, a high, thin sound. Sunbeam squeaked, jumping behind Useless, and Gloryhog took a sudden step backwards. "Get up, Deadjet."

"His name is _Deadjet?_ " Gloryhog had to ask.

"Suits him," Useless said. "It's no more his _real_ name than, well, any of us is really called what we're called here."

"I've always been Sunbeam," the yellowish Seeker admitted timidly, looking over Useless' wing. Pariah kicked Deadjet again, this time inflicting a small dent in his hip.

"Ow." The voice was low, flat and deliberate. He didn't exclaim in pain, Useless noted, he actually _said_ 'ow', as if he only did it because he had to.

"Get up, Deadjet," Pariah insisted, kicking him a couple of times more. Useless joined in, and Sunbeam followed his example. Deadjet tried to ignore the kicking, but finally uttered another slow 'ow' and sat up.

"Misdemeanour said he's been here for four diuns," Pariah said, poking Deadjet's shoulder-vent with a finger. "Apparently he's survived by conserving his fuel."

_Useful,_ Useless thought. _If we knew how to do that, we ... could ... end up like him. Um._ "How did you do it, Deadjet? How come you've survived so long?"

There was a long pause, but Useless could see a very faint glow to the darkened optics now. "Use no fuel unnecessarily. Armour, internal repairs, sight and hearing - not necessary. Rest constantly. Never move."

"So that's the secret," Gloryhog said. "Well, now we know that, all we need is to find the energon dispenser and find a place to sit it out."

"Sit what out?" Useless asked, turning on him. "He's _starving_ , you idiot. It's just taking longer than for whoever else he was here with because he's deactivated most of the time."

"He's right," Pariah said, surprising Useless again. "Deadjet's just going to starve to death on the floor."

"Sooner dead on the floor than dead in the dark," Deadjet replied, and lay down to his near-death dreamlessness.

 

* * *

 

The Dark Zone ran in a ragged ring around the base's functional core. Misdemeanour stood on the edge, performing a last quick synch with the main computer, before opening her right chest-compartment and activating the powerful arc lamp inside. _So much for the latest technology,_ she thought. The lamp was one of Overhaul's installations. She'd never had modern enough systems for the chest-mounted missile launchers the rejects had.

With light, the edge of the Dark Zone appeared as a dividing line between the clean floor, where the computer still guided the cleaning drones, and the dust-littered floor ahead, which the computer was entirely ignorant of. At least it made tracing lost rejects easy enough. Trippin's footprints were clear in the dust, a meandering trail of block-and-ring marks wavering from side to side across the corridor, turning at junctions without aim or pattern.

_Lost, addled chemical fool,_ Misdemeanour thought.

There were two sets of tracks now.

One set of wobbling prints that stumbled from side to side, and one set of footprints that said steady pace, firm gait, not a touch of confusion or uncertainty. _Oho. Who is this who has come?_ They weren't hers - too big. They weren't Brick's - too small. Overhaul's? Too wide. Another reject? Too steady.

A reject trap? Had two of them agreed to gang up on her, perhaps actually try to put up a fight? The thought brightened her laser-core. _Great Megatron bless 'em, the little fools! As if they'd stand a chance._ But a try was a good sign. They'd get extra energon for that, along with dented heads and bent pride.

She proceeded with more caution, dimming the arc light until it illuminated only the ground ahead of her. Her senses prickled on high activation, wings stretched out to catch any sound or movement of air, sensor-crest seeking any flicker in background radio and magnetism.

The second set of tracks returned.

Misdemeanour quickly stepped back, widening the beam. The second set of tracks turned off down another corridor.

There were little purple spots on the floor, little glowing speckles pattering along beside the returning tracks.

Misdemeanour activated her guns, killed the arc light, and pressed back against the wall. The twilight returned, the flecks of energon on the floor barely showing in the dark.

_More than two cycles old,_ she realised. _Whoever it was must've been and gone._ Still, she followed the trail of energon with all the caution she knew, followed it to a place where the spatters thinned out and stopped. Allowing herself a glint of light, Misdemeanour found she was back in the core with no tracks to follow.

_By Great Megatron's back-strut!_ Misdemeanour cursed silently. _Vanished! This isn't reject style..._ She synched with the base computer, demanding transponder logs for that section of the base, then turned back the way she'd come. _Ceiling collapse? I doubt it..._ She had read the rejects' records, knew them, understood them from long experience. This was not the way things happened.

Back where the tracks returned, she followed the energon trail, now thicker-spotted, down to a place choked with debris, where a bright splash of purple illuminated something in the dark. Misdemeanour approached with no fear - nothing could leak this much energon and still be a threat. She roused the arc light.

Trippin' sat comfortably on the rubble that blocked the corridor, his limbs draped loosely over the broken joists and wall-panels. His head was tipped too far backwards, his throat yawning blackly where his energon had poured out to paint his chest, trickle between his thighs and pool at his pedes.

He was smiling.

There was no sign of a struggle, just one of Trippin's gas-bombs lying abandoned and empty on the ground. Misdemeanour reached over and touched the reject. He was quite dead, and had been so for long enough for his aura to fade completely.

_At least a two cycles, perhaps more. This is too soon, and too violent. Far, far too soon for this, and the energon left to run away..._ Misdemeanour knew neither Brickhouse nor Overhaul had done this, and if one of the rejects were such a swift killer they wouldn't be here.

_Who is this who has come?_

 

* * *

 

They went back into the barrack-room. It was too depressing to stand around Deadjet and watch him wait to die. _I hope, when the end comes, it isn't like that_ , Pariah thought, tugging worriedly at her hair. It was tangled and matted. She hadn't been able to attend to it for a while now, and that blasted Mayhem had helped matters none by dragging her out of the base by it. At least none of the idiots she was stuck with had made comments about it...

"Pariah, what _is_ that stuff on your head?"

... until now.

"It's _hair_ , you idiot," she told Useless.

"Oh yeah, hair," Gloryhog immediately agreed. "I knew a fellow lieutenant of the Fleet, he had hair. It's a microfilament sensor array, it's really useful for picking up energy signatures -"

"Shut up, 'hog," Useless said. He seemed to be getting a liking for the phrase.

Pariah didn't want to agree with Useless, but it was better than having to listen to Gloryhog carry on ignorantly. "It's hair, not a sensor array. Females have it." _That should explain it, shouldn't it?_

"What's a female?" Sunbeam asked Useless.

_Sucky little wing-ornament_ , Pariah thought nastily. " _I_ am a female!"

"So the lieutenant was a female too?" Sunbeam asked, again addressing Useless.

"No, you idiot!" Pariah snapped. "Gloryhog was lying again. There is no lieutenant with hair."

"Yes there is, I knew him," Gloryhog insisted. "We were at Kolkullis together last summer."

"Err ... " Faintheart started. Everyone turned to face him in sheer surprise that he'd found the courage to speak. "I-I've been stationed in Kolkullis for seven vorns, and you weren't there." He shuffled a little, hands held meekly to his chest, and in a sorry little tone told Gloryhog, "You're lying."

"Eh - but - I..." Gloryhog trailed off hopelessly. "Nobody ever believes me," he muttered sulkily.

"Oh, shut up, 'hog," Useless said again.

"You really like saying that, don't you?" Pariah snapped at him. "Eeeh, do you know any other sentences? Perhaps something along the lines of 'thanks'?"

"How about 'why the smelt do you have _hair_ , Pariah'?" Useless replied, sounding as sulky as Gloryhog.

"Because - because it's what females have!" Pariah could only say, waving her hands.

"I thought females were little and weak and followed the Autobots around," Sunbeam said, sounding as if he was apologising for it.

"I'm a _female Decepticon!_ I am _exactly the same_ as you lot except I'm _female!_ I have _hair!_ I like looking _pretty!_ "

"Oh, I get it," Useless said, picking at the black crust on his cheek and making it leak again. "You're one of those weirdoes who paints their faces because they think it'll make them stronger or something."

"No! I ... oh, I give up." Pariah folded her arms and sulked with the rest of them. "You're all idiots."

"Um..." Sunbeam looked around. "I think you're right. We're all idiots."

"We're a bunch of total losers," Useless agreed glumly. Faintheart whimpered, which was about as close to a definitive agreement as he got. "We're all going to die. Die, or end up like Deadjet, which just means it'll take longer for us to die."

" _I'm_ not going to die," Gloryhog said suddenly, rising out of his funk. "I'm on my way out of this place, back to the officers' towers, back home. I'm going to drink refined oils and fly around the second ring of Vos."

Pariah had to grin. "'hog, they'd shoot you before you got anywhere _near_ the _fifth_ ring." Faintheart whimpered, apparently at the thought of being shot, but Useless and Sunbeam snickered along with her at the ridiculousness of Gloryhog's boast.

"Well, I am!" Gloryhog insisted. "The Air Marshal of the Second Fleet is a close personal friend of mine and as soon as my carrier condorcon reaches him, he'll send a squad of Mayhems to free me." Pariah wasn't sure if he was trying to make them laugh or not now, but laughter was what he got. Even Faintheart smiled. "I am! I'm leaving! Any breem now!"

"Main door isn't locked," said Brickhouse, causing them all to jump and turn to face him. "Who here is Hangdog?" One of the wretched-faced standard-types sitting at the central console shoved a hand up. "Turn your jammer off." There was a pause, apparently as Hangdog turned off whatever jamming device he had and Brickhouse tested his radio. "Right. Don't turn it back on." Then he looked around as if counting heads. "Gloryhog, fetch Deadjet. Where are Hystericon and Clodpole?"

"They went to the energon dispenser, sir! They went six breems ago, sir, sir, they haven't come back, sir! Trippin' isn't here either, sir, he didn't come back, sir."

"Shut up, Tattletale." The big Hunter frowned. Pariah heard the crackle of a radio transmission, but she didn't have access codes to the channel. "Everyone stay here. Don't do anything." He left.

"How can we do anything? He's locked the door behind him!" Useless protested, well, uselessly.

"What's going on?" Sunbeam asked Useless.

_Why does he hang onto him so?_ Pariah wondered, and then felt someone softly plucking at her elbow. "No, Faintheart, I don't know what's going on," she sighed. _Why does_ he _hang onto_ me _?_

 

* * *

 

_[Hystericon and Clodpole are missing,]_ Brickhouse reported. _[Went to the energon dispenser six breems ago. Checked it. Nobody there, not been accessed today.]_

_[By Great Megatron's trigger!]_ Misdemeanour swore, commanding the base computer to find them and kicking it in Just That Spot whenever it stalled. The transponder check on the energon trail had produced nothing. Whoever killed Trippin' was neither a reject nor one of staff. _Someone's come here, someone got in when we weren't looking, blast this idiot computer! [Hystericon's on level plus-three, forward wing, junction seven. He's sitting in one of the window bays, probably having a crying fit. Give him a thumping. The stupid machine can't find Clodpole.]_ She called up Clodpole's last position and hammered her fingertips on the keyboard frame as she waited. _['Haul? Can you hear me now?]_

_[I hear you fine, Missy, and it's always fine to hear you.]_

_[Now is not the time. What about Trippin'?]_

_[Knife-work. A three-span blade with a cryoceramic edge by the looks of it. It sliced through his intakes as well as his throat.]_ A pause. _[Missy, none of the rejects could have a blade like that. That's Mayhem-quality equipment.]_

_[Is a Mayhem using it? Why would a Mayhem want to kill a reject like Trippin'?]_

_[Bad dose?]_

_[Nothing on record to indicate Trippin' ever passed his gas on. If he had, he might not have been here.]_

_[Whoever did this did it with a single cut. Through the inner wall of the right intake, through the gorget, through the fuel-lines and intake conduits, cut the central and secondary neurochords, severed both forward neck-struts, out through the other intake vent. The wound itself isn't fatal but the system shock from severing the neurochords was. One smooth, single motion. A steady hand and a fast one, although not necessarily a strong arm.]_

_[Veteran.]_

_[This is someone who knows what he's doing. He's done it before. He's going to do it again.]_

_[I know, 'Haul.]_

_[I'm afraid, Missy.]_

Misdemeanour looked over her shoulder. Her wings did not so much as quiver. _[Don't fear, 'Haul. Brick and I'll find whoever it is.]_

The computer finally remembered where it had last seen Clodpole. _[Brick, Clodpole's signal cut off in the middle of the main corridor, three sections down from the barrack-room. I'll meet you there.]_

 

* * *

 

"What's happening?" Deadjet asked when Gloryhog finally extracted him from the back room.

"Brickho - oh, he's gone again." Gloryhog looked stumped. "Useless, Pariah, what's going on?"

"Brickhouse came in and went away again. We're locked in," Pariah summed up before Useless could reply.

"Brickhouse went to find Clodpole and Hystericon, whoever they are." Looking around, Useless couldn't see anyone missing.

"No, wait. The downwing who was crying over there," Pariah said, pointing to an empty seat. "He's gone. I guess he's Hystericon."

"Brickhouse must have wanted to tell us something. All of us." Useless said.

"So he'll be back with the other two?" Sunbeam asked.

"I guess," Pariah said.

"What does he want with Deadjet?" Useless asked.

"Make an example?" Pariah shrugged. Deadjet didn't react; he'd gone dead again. Other rejects were edging away from him, gibbering at his dead, rotten metal. "Show us what'll happen to us soon? Stop whimpering, Faintheart."

"But I'm _scared_ ," Faintheart snivelled.

"Does it make you lot nervous?" Gloryhog asked rather suddenly. Useless could only look at him, bemused, and saw Pariah doing the same. "When they cry. Faintheart and everyone. Does it make any of you nervous?" He was trying to pull his confident face together, but it wasn't working. There were stark rips of nervous fear in his aura, blaring tremors of uncertainty. This was the real Gloryhog.

Useless suddenly realised the five of them had pulled into a little circle, wingtip to wingtip, closing all the others out.

"I don't do it on purpose," Faintheart protested weakly, wringing his hands. "It just happens when I'm afraid."

"You're always afraid," Pariah said bluntly.

"It's not my fault," Faintheart mumbled, looking away. "World's scary."

"Oh, install a back-strut," Pariah snapped, rolling her head theatrically. "No wonder you're in a place like this."

"You're here too," Sunbeam said in a tone of apology. Pariah shut her mouth with a clank, lip modules pressed together in a perfectly straight line. Perhaps unaware she was doing it, she tugged at her hair, winding the thin wires around her finger and tugging on them until they came out, one at a time.

Useless looked around, scanning the room a few times. The grey-faced wretches were still sitting around the central console, still blank-opticced over blank screens. The handful of others were sitting at the consoles around the walls, just waiting ... waiting. Waiting like Deadjet, waiting to starve and die.

"I won't wait," Useless said firmly, speaking before he realised he'd thought it.

"What? Brickhouse'll be back soon, surely," Pariah said, looking from Useless to the door and back again.

"No. Forget Brickhouse for a moment."

"He's a bit big to forget," Sunbeam said sorryly, sounding as if he was trying to make a joke.

"No! Look - we've been brought here to _die_ , right?" Useless insisted.

"Yeah. Work and starve or sit around like Deadjet and starve." Pariah folded her arms and frowned at the thought.

"So - so - I don't want to die!" He waved his hands, almost frantic at the prospect. "Either we do what they say and sooner or later we starve and we die or we don't do what they say and they dock our energon and then we die sooner or we just sit around like Deadjet and die later. I don't want to die!"

"I'm not going to die," Gloryhog said firmly. "I'm going to walk out of here and fly away."

"Yes! We'll get outside and fly away. Misdemeanour said the City of Lanterns wasn't far away, we'll go there." Useless was about ready to run out of the room and go, just to be moving, to be away from the dark corridors and the close ceilings and the grey-faced half-dead waiting to die.

"You'll die."

They all turned to look at Deadjet.

"What?" Pariah asked sharply. Without thinking, they moved to encircle the corpse-like Hunter. "What do you mean?"

"You'll die. You haven't got enough energon to reach Lantern City. You'll crash and die halfway."

"Is he right?" Sunbeam asked Useless.

"Seen it," Deadjet continued. "Someone always tries to fly. They crash."

"And you'd know!" Pariah's words of scorn turned to realisation as she spoke them. "You've seen it all here, haven't you? You can tell us what to avoid."

"No."

"Why not?" Useless demanded. His cheek itched where the picomeds were knitting his armour up, and he wanted to peel the sealing crust off it.

"Waste of energon."

"You're talking now," Sunbeam pointed out. Deadjet didn't respond.

"We'll take you with us," Gloryhog said, treating Deadjet to his broadest smile, his most confident look, holding out his hands in friendly gesture. "We're going to get out of here and we'll let you to come with us. You can have a place on my team! Come on, I'll even buy you a drink."

"If you tell us how to get out of here," Useless added, frowning as sternly as he could. From the flicker of a smile on Pariah's face, he must've looked silly.

"Go up the main corridor. Front door's there." Deadjet's optics ceased to glow.

"But we can't get out," Faintheart said softly, his first contribution to the discussion. Useless realised he'd forgotten the pale Hunter again.

"Fine, we wait until Brickhouse comes back, listen to whatever he says. Then we're going outside. Even if we don't leave immediately, we'll still be out in the open." For once, he didn't need to explain his reasoning. The room was claustrophying, the low ceiling and the slanting walls looming downwards as if the room was slowly getting smaller and smaller. All six looked up as one to eye the ceiling with suspicion, as if it were waiting until they weren't paying attention to fall.

"Look at that," Sunbeam said. "There's an Autobot symbol on that panel." He pointed.

"Blast me, so there is," Gloryhog exclaimed.

"Why would someone..." Pariah stopped in mid-sentence and laughed. "Deadjet, did this place used to be an Autobot base?"

"Yes. Why else send Decepticons here to die?"

 

* * *

 

The repair bay was almost totally silent, a night hangar for a half-dozen little stars on cables, all clustered around Overhaul. They looked over his shoulder as he scraped Trippin's slit throat with a microparticle scoop. The dead Seeker's head sat in a tray behind Overhaul, cable-hooked into the instrument bank on which it stood. Overhaul wished he had more up-to-date equipment. The repair bay's systems would take a cycle or more to reactivate Trippin's memory module, and even then there was no guarantee he'd seen whoever killed him.

Then again, there was that expression on his face - that look of pleasant surprise. He'd seen _something_.

Something ... _nice?_

"Blast it, nothing," Overhaul muttered, straightening up. He flicked the empty scoop over his shoulder and listened as it bounced off the edge of the equipment tray instead of landing in it and then clattered to the floor. "Blast again." He walked around the console, his little pale-lit island in the silent sea of darkness. The repair bay seemed quite vast in its darkness, as if it extended on endlessly down into the depths of the planet. Sometimes, when he had nothing to do, Overhaul would lie flat on the floor with one audio-sensor pressed to the panelling, listening to the rumble of ancient machinery in the uttermost depths.

Trippin's head looked past him, dark-opticced, mouth slightly open in a limpid smile. Overhaul lifted the lower jaw with a finger, hearing the quiet _click_ as the mandenta locked together, but when he took his finger away, the mouth fell open again.

"You'll catch an insecticon that way," he told the dead head, wagging a finger at it as he looked around for the scoop. There was no answer except the slight creak of seized jaw-tensors settling back into their death-configuration and the dull buzz from the computer as it decompiled Trippin's last minutes. Overhaul spotted the glimmer of the scoop. It had rolled under the bank of instruments behind his console. Getting down on his knees, he stuck an arm underneath the bank and groped around, stretching for the little sparkle just beyond his fingertips. He stretched - _Got it!_

The door opened.

Overhaul didn't move. The footsteps that came in were not Misdemeanour's firm, small-footed tread. They were not Brickhouse's huge clonking thump-steps. They were too light for Hunter footsteps. They were standard-sized Seeker feet. A firm tread, a confident tread - not the tread of an uncertain, shuffling reject.

_Who is this who has come?_

He was chest-down on the floor, knees hunched up underneath him, one arm under an instrument desk, wings and fundament stuck up in the air, aft to the newcomer. His scalpels were in the instrument tray next to the console, well out of reach. He couldn't remember where his guns were. Overhaul switched his optics off. _If I stay still, he won't see me. If I'm quiet, he won't hear me. If I don't radio, he won't know where I am. I'm not here, I'm not here, I'm not here..._

The footsteps strolled across to the plinth that bore Trippin's corpse. Overhaul could feel each footstep vibrating up through his cockpit. He didn't dare power his optics. He barely dared to keep his audio sensors active.

_If that's a reject, I'm going to feel like_ such _an idiot._

Still he did not dare look up. His back tingled as if he had no armour there, as if the one with the knife was leaning over the console and _tickling_ him, waiting for him to look up. An itch ran up his back as his sensors strained to feel a knifepoint that wasn't there, at least not yet.

The footsteps were coming towards him. Past the second of the five plinths ... past the first...

_I should radio Brickhouse ... Missy..._ His outstretched arm ached, the tensors in his elbow beginning to quiver. His hands wanted to shake but he couldn't let them.

The footsteps crossed the little space and turned the corner of the console.

He could no longer look away. Overhaul activated his optics and turned over, sitting on his aft with the microparticle scoop raised as if it could provide some defence.

"Oh no," he said thickly, "it's _you_."

The Seeker smiled.


	2. Chapter 2

"I don't know why we're here, nobody told me why I'm here. I don't see why we have to stay!"

"He told us to stay here, he did. I told you that, you heard him say it. If you go I'll tell him!"

Useless gritted his mandenta and tried once more to deactivate his audio sensors, or at least turn them down. The running argument - well, whinge - going on between Whineswift and Tattletale, with interjections from Scapegoat, was about as pacifying as someone using peen-hammers to play marches on his ailerons. Pariah's mouth had compressed into a dead straight line again and even Gloryhog looked ruffled. At his elbow Sunbeam sighed.

"I don't see why I have to stay here!" Whineswift protested futilely, again.

"Oh, shut _up!_ " Pariah snapped at him, spurring a fresh outbreak of complaint. "Eeeh! I can't stand these idiots! Let's get out of here before they drive me crazy!"

"Shouldn't we wait for Brickhouse?" Useless asked, fearing a beating or worse.

"Oh, like you've never disobeyed an order before?" Pariah asked. "The worst he can do is beat us a bit -"

"He can kill you," Deadjet interjected solemnly. "If he wants."

"I don't believe you," Gloryhog said, looking up at Deadjet with that perfectly smooth expression of total self-confidence that Useless was divided between hating and envying. Useless noticed then that Gloryhog's colours were fading. Gone was the almost iridescent royal blue, turning into a dowdy dark bluish-grey. His green and yellow highlights had paled to dim remnants. His armour was beginning to peel around the joints.

Deadjet didn't reply.

"Well, it doesn't matter if he can or he can't if we can't get out anyway," Useless said. "The door's locked."

"There must be another way out. Since when did anyone build a base with only one way out?" Pariah said, scowling at him.

"This used to be an Autobot base," Useless reminded her. "All the escape routes'll be for runts."

"Well, big Autobots have to escape somehow," Pariah said, shrugging.

"Big Autobots don't escape, they fight to the death. _Then_ the runts run away." Useless picked at the seal on his cheek again, and it leaked. _Smelt it!_

"And when did you ever see that happen?"

Useless couldn't answer that. "I killed an Autobot once," he murmured. "I really did."

"Yeah, so what? I've killed three," Pariah said sulkily, folding her arms again. Useless scowled at her, reset his optics in a blink, and looked again. Her armour had been grey when he'd met her earlier. Now it seemed to have pinkish tints creeping into it, like the faded remains of a deep reddish tone. He looked down at his own hands again, quite grey, quite faded.

"Deadjet, is there another way out of here?" Gloryhog asked. Deadjet didn't reply. "Deadjet! I asked you a question!" Still no response. "Blast you, Deadjet, I'm in charge here -"

"No you're not!" Pariah and Useless shouted at the same time.

"I am!" Gloryhog shouted in return.

"Back door," Deadjet said.

"Well, show us then," Pariah said impatiently.

"No."

"Why not?" Useless asked.

"Why should I?"

"Because ... because we told you to." It was the best answer he could think of, but Deadjet didn't reply. "Because we'll make you."

"He's bigger than us," Faintheart pointed out timidly.

"Not you, he isn't," Pariah said bitterly, looking up at her pallid follower. "He's starving, weak ... I bet you could take him, Faintheart." That got a whimper.

"I could take him one-handed," Gloryhog smirked, gesturing expansively. "I know seven kinds of martial arts, including Metallikato - hey, what are you all laughing at?"

"'hog, if you knew seven kinds of martial arts, you wouldn't be here," Useless managed through his chuckling.

"The back door?" Sunbeam asked quietly. "Where is it?"

"Three doors left, two right -"

"No, show us," Useless insisted. "You're coming with us."

Deadjet rumbled a bit. "Do I have to?"

"Yes. Look, we're going to get out of here, no matter what Misdemeanour or Brickhouse do. We need to get outside and make a plan -"

"We need _energon_ ," Gloryhog interrupted.

"Yes, well, that's part of the plan," Useless managed.

"I'm going to find the energon dispenser and crack it, fuel myself until it's running out of my intakes and be out of here in a breem," Gloryhog boasted, sneering at Useless.

"Do you know where it is? Do you have any idea how to break into it?" Useless asked hotly, irate of the liar. Gloryhog looked away sullenly. "I thought not. Now, Deadjet, show us the way out."

 

* * *

 

From where she stood, Misdemeanour could see the main corridor, three junctions down from the control room door. It looked unusually dim. Dauntless of darkness, she set a fast pace towards the junction. The pools of light passed over her like stations of an underground railway, passing by smoothly and unheeded. The main corridor junction to the control room was dark. The light had either been broken or just blown out. Misdemeanour added it to her mental list of Things Gone Wrong Today, down at the bottom, as she turned right and jogged up the main corridor.

She could hear crying, and it curdled her fueltank. _Why do they have to cry? Why don't they realise how weak it makes them sound?_ Another station of the light passed over her as she moved upwards towards the third junction below the barrack-room, where the crying was and the broad-winged silhouette of Brickhouse filled the corridor. Before the second junction between her and them, she felt warmth and wetness underfoot. The floor of the next junction glowed dimly purple, even though the light was blue.

"Brick!" she called. "Is that Clodpole bleeding up there?"

"Yes," the Hunter replied, turning only his head to speak to her. His wingtips nearly touched the sides of the corridor and his nosecone was scraping the ceiling. She was small enough to duck under his wing, but he still had to make an awkward half-turn to let her pass. She saw he had Hystericon, one char-black hand clamped around a pale forearm. The reject was crying quite freely, squirming back and forth on the spot, trying to get out of Brickhouse's grip. He didn't notice her. He was too preoccupied by what was on the floor.

A dead-grey standard-build Seeker lay there, staring at the ceiling with wide optics and a gentle smile. His throat was slit from intake to intake, his head lolling backwards on stress-fracturing armour. Energon pooled on the floor around him, trickling down the main corridor, down towards the repair bay.

She looked for footprints but Hystericon's shifting and Brickhouse's huge pedes had obliterated any traces. She leapt over the body and ducked into the darkness up-corridor. There were no energon-bright footprints there, nor in either of the branching corridors. Whoever it was, he'd gone downwards ... _[Overhaul! Overhaul, respond!]_

There was nothing on the radio but static.

"You, Hystericon, stop bawling and act like a Decepticon for once," she ordered, pointed her baton at the reject. The sobbing stopped with a hiccup and a whine. "Pick him up and follow me, quickly." Brickhouse let go of Hystericon and grabbed Clodpole's arms. Hystericon, withering under her gaze, gingerly lifted the dead body's legs.

They took the corridor as fast as they could, pedes slippery with the energon. Misdemeanour racked her wings back hard and forged on ahead, baton firmly in hand. _There are only three places he could go and cause trouble - the control room is locked, the barrack-room is locked ... and the repair bay ..._ She quickened her step again although her pedes slithered wetly. Past the darkened junction the corridor tilted downwards, one more station of light before the four-junction plunge into darkness and the green-lit spot beside the repair bay door.

The door barely opened in time for her. She skidded to a stop, feet escaping from under her as she raked the room with her arc light. Nothing there, nobody moved.

"Overhaul? Overhaul!" She looked the room over again, but there was nothing - Trippin's body on its plinth, the cable hangers, energon puddling out from behind the equipment banks ... Words of denial flocked to her brain module, even as the door closed behind Hystericon, and she ran around the equipment bank.

Overhaul sat with his back to his console, legs stretched out in front of him. His head was tipped back, staring at the ceiling with that same look of pleasant surprise, almost a smile, and his throat smiling also in that same black openness. His energon, still fresh, ran down his chest in a broad purple swathe. It spilled over his hands as they rested limply on the floor, fingers slightly curled as if he had held out his hands in welcome greeting and then dropped them to his sides.

Misdemeanour sat down heavily. Her wings were shaking. Her knees were shaking. Her insides were shaking. _Not you too, 'Haul, not you as well._ He was their third, the other corner of their Wing. She felt Brickhouse rest an energon-wet hand on her shoulder, almost pressing her down with the simple weight of it.

"Now what?" Brickhouse asked quietly.

Misdemeanour had to wait, to let the shivering sensations stop. She heard Hystericon sobbing again. "Shut him up. Turn the lights on." The words clotted in her vocaliser.

Brickhouse left her side and, as the lights came up, she managed to get on her feet again. She looked over her shoulder at one of her wings. It still trembled slightly. _Weak,_ she thought. _Too weak for battle, too weak to train, now too weak to even look at a dead comrade? Weak ..._ She looked back at Overhaul and shook her head. _Where are we going to find another technician now? Blast it ... the rejects are one thing, but Overhaul..._

Hystericon lingered in the space between the plinths and the door, gaze shifting nervously from corpses to entrance and back again. Misdemeanour fixed him with a look. "Stay there until I give you another order," she said with the utmost firmness she could muster.

"Not him," Brickhouse grumbled.

"He'll fill the gap until we find a proper replacement."

"He's a reject." Brickhouse had left the console and was now examining the memory monitor attached to Trippin's head.

"'Weak shall join with weak and bring forth strength'," she reminded him.

"Autobot saying. I'm not weak," Brickhouse objected, but Misdemeanour knew him well enough to detect the lack of conviction in his level tone. Overhaul wasn't the only one who'd first come to her as a reject.

"Never mind that now. Can you get anything useful out of that head?" she asked.

"Retrieval's complete." He tapped a few commands into the monitor. "Last memories are mostly scrambled. System shock. It managed to compile an image." Another few key-taps and the image appeared. Misdemeanour elbowed him aside to take a closer look.

_Who is this who has come?_

It was a standard-build Seeker, standard head and standard armaments. He had no Decepticon blazon in his wings and was all coloured in ambers and ivories. He glowed like gentle light on ceramic armour, like the pale golden domes of Helex in the first rays of a white dawn, and his smile was as soft as a sunbeam.

"By Great Megatron's cannon!" Misdemeanour exclaimed. "It's Honeycream!"

 

* * *

 

The barrack-room didn't just lead into a set of dead-end chambers as Useless had thought. The dead-end chambers turned out to have doors in them, doors that lead into more chambers and more chambers after that. All of them were the same - empty, dimly lit, barely large enough for the six of them to stand in together. Useless knew from the fourth chamber he was pretty well lost. Sunbeam clung to his elbow dependently.

"How long have you been here?" he asked Deadjet. No reply.

"He said four diuns," Pariah told him.

"Yeah, but that's four diuns of lying on the floor. When did you explore this place?"

"I uploaded the map. Idiot," Deadjet said flatly. Useless couldn't argue with that. He hadn't even thought of doing a simple data-synch with the base computer. At least nobody else had thought to do that either. Gloryhog had that frowning, bitter expression again, and Pariah looked like she was kicking herself internally for not thinking of it herself. "Down there."

There was a big octagonal plate the floor, clearly covering some sort of shaft or other. Solemn symbols were embossed onto it and four sets of double-handed grips rose from its surface.

"Anyone read Autobot?" Pariah asked, leaning over it.

"'This is the place for those who have passed beyond all care and pain. Rest, brother, and sleep in light 'til all are one,'" Sunbeam read.

"Who taught _you_ to read Autobot?" Useless asked, surprised.

"They had me prisoner for a while," Sunbeam replied. "They wanted to 'rehabilitate' me."

"You _escaped?_ " Pariah apparently couldn't believe that either.

"It was kind of an accident," Sunbeam said sheepishly, twining his fingers together. "I was being transferred, and one of them made a joke, and, well, it was quite funny, so I laughed, and ... and I smiled ... and ... _it_ happened." He looked a little sad. "It was all rather embarrassing. I was so surprised I didn't even think of escaping, but one of the others I was with decided it was the chance he'd been waiting for, and, well, they _were_ about to take my brain out and put it in a box, so the next thing I knew I was back in Zendralbron."

"Well, that's not going to get the lid up," Pariah said, interrupting Sunbeam's rambling. "It looks like it'll take two of us to lift it at least. Deadjet, Faintheart, get it up."

"Too weak," Deadjet said, actually shaking his head a fraction. Faintheart squatted at the edge of the cover, hooked his fingers into one of the grips and looked up, waiting for someone else to join him.

Useless locked gazes with Gloryhog. "I'll do it," he said.

"That's quite all right, Useless," Gloryhog replied, spreading his wings out more fully. "You needn't waste our time pretending you can."

"No, I said _I'll_ do it. Don't shake your ugly wings at me," Useless said through gritted mandenta.

"No, _I'll_ do it. You step back and let your _commander_ do it, _Useless_."

" _I'm_ commander here!"

"Idiots!" Pariah cried, throwing her hands in the air. Before they could do more than look at her in surprise, she strode forwards, squatted opposite Faintheart, grabbed the grips and heaved. Faintheart creaked in the back of his aspiration conduit, Pariah grimaced, and the cover shifted up a fraction. Sunbeam grabbed the third set of grips and heaved along with them. Useless lunged for the fourth set at the same time Gloryhog did. They both got a single hand on and jostled, trying to shoulder one another aside in a struggle to be the one to make the final difference. Gloryhog bared his mandenta at Useless; they were facetted and sharp.

"Fancy face," Useless growled, rumbling his engines. "Only the weak have _teeth_."

"Stop squabbling and _lift_ , you idiots!" Pariah ordered. Useless heaved. He saw Sunbeam straining on the other side of the cover, wings shaking with the effort, and heard Faintheart groan again. With a scrape, the great lid came over the edge. Faintheart leant backwards, pulling the cover towards him, Pariah pushed, Sunbeam dragging the thing sideways.

Useless let go and threw himself at Gloryhog, pushing him over. Clonking and banging, the liar landed on his back, one wing bending and springing back with a _thrummm_. Useless scrabbled for Gloryhog's throat, dragging up sparks with his fingertips, forgetful of everything except the fierce urge to dominate his rival, to conquer and destroy. The liar punched him under the costa, denting him with a _clong_ , then dug his fingers into Useless' vents with a shriek of alloy-friction and pulling sideways. Useless hissed, tensors groaned under the strain, movement-motors whining as he pulled against Gloryhog's arm. With his other hand the liar clawed at Useless' face, the metal buckling and springing back under his fingers. Useless twisted his head, trying to bite Gloryhog's hand, mandenta snapping loudly, and tried to grab his neck, but the liar had his chin pulled down against his chest and he couldn't get a grip.

Someone grabbed him by the intakes and hauled him back. Useless elbowed futilely, then Pariah hit him firmly on the top of the head, scrambling his sensor-crests and stunning him for a moment.

"Idiots! Stop wasting time and energon," was all she said. Useless turned around in time to see her jump feet-first into the shaft.

 

* * *

 

The door to the command chamber was open.

Misdemeanour quickened her pace and heard Brickhouse lengthen his stride behind her, dragging Hystericon whimpering along behind him. Only she, Overhaul and Brickhouse had the code to get in, and the door was on an automatic lock. It shouldn't be _able_ to stay open.

At the last junction before the command chamber Brickhouse pushed Hystericon into an offshoot corridor, motioning him to stay still. The reject cowered in the deeper shadows.

Before they were three hister from the door they could see the flicker of the dim light within. Misdemeanour held still, watching the shadows, looking for any hint of a Seeker-shape, and saw none.

 _[Honeycream doesn't sabotage, does he?]_ Brickhouse asked dubiously.

 _[He'll stick a knife in anything, from Seekers to door-locks to radios,]_ Misdemeanour replied. Still the light flickered, still there was no sign of a Seeker-shadow.

_[Bomb the room?]_

_[Negative, we might be able to salvage something.]_ She had to admit to herself it was rather unlikely. Waving Brickhouse up behind her she edged up to the door, baton in hand and arm-turrets activated. Silently as she could she slipped across the doorway, scanning the room as she did. She saw no Seeker, and was certain she made no sound. There was no response from within, no movement other than the crackle of sparks from the slashed controls. Still, he could be up against the ceiling ... Taking the risk, Misdemeanour raised her arm-turrets and flew into the control chamber, turning in the air to sweep the room for any sign of a Seeker.

Nothing.

She took a second, closer look, seeking for any sign of a distortion field or shimmer of a photon displaced, anything. Still no sign of Honeycream.

Sinking down to a standing position, she called Brickhouse in. With him blocking up the door the room felt almost claustrophobic. They looked around, now taking stock of the state of the controls. The main terminal had been slashed across the keyboard, main monitor and master control box, deep grooves oozing coolant gel over the charred evidence of brief fires. Sparks sputtered from every angle, crisping and crackling. The radio station had been neatly sliced around and pulled out, the innards severed with the same blade that had cut three throats that day already. It was not devastation. It was neat, clean, controlled sabotage.

"Slag-sucking sharkticon-shaped star-spawn!" Misdemeanour swore.

"He's only cut the wires," Brickhouse frowned.

"He's cut the circuits, too - look at the radio." She unlocked the master control box and looked inside. "He's pierced all six of the master circuits. Everything's gone. Slag-eater!"

"Now what?"

"We go for the emergency cache."

"What if the doors are locked?"

"We unlock them."

"With what?" Brickhouse looked to the punctured master controls dubiously.

"With brute force and violence," Misdemeanour replied. "Or the manual release system, if he missed that."

 

* * *

 

Pariah didn't have time to activate her momentum thrusters before her feet hit the ground, sending a painful jolt up her frame and an echo out into the darkness. She winced, and then scowled. _What in Sigma's name were those two idiots playing at? What the ... oh, they're idiots._

She stood at the crossing of two aisles in the middle of a low dark place. The path to her left and right was lined with junctions as far as the light would show, parallel aisles leading fore and aft, out of dark and into dark again. The only illumination came from the hole in the ceiling above her, and that was dim. She could hardly see a dozen paces in any direction.

 _Great,_ more _darkness and junctions. There aren't even any lights down here._

Useless' thrusters appeared, dangling over the edge of the hole, feeling with his pedes for a ladder that didn't exist. Pariah grabbed his exhaust-nozzles and yanked, pulling him down. He landed on his fundament with a loud _clonk,_ then sat there and glared at her. She felt something approaching a smile edge onto her face at his sullen discomfit. There was a scrabbling sound above them.

"Slag-spawned smelthead!" Gloryhog jumped down the hole, landing on Useless with a loud crash.

"Get off me, you junk-scraping grease-heap!" Useless was raking Gloryhog's sides with his fingers, armour screaming as dermaplating shredded, and trying to kick him off, thrusters ringing, whilst Gloryhog appeared to be trying to twist Useless' head off. She could hear their tensors creaking and their motion-motors shrilling under the clanks and bongs and scraping.

" _Idiots!_ " she yelled at them over the noise that seemed to echo out and come back again. "Stop that! Now! I order you both to stop!"

They both paused and stared at her.

" _You're_ not in command!" Useless yelled.

"I don't take orders from you!" Gloryhog shouted at the same moment. Then Useless hit him in the cockpit, adding the crash of fracturing ceramics to the din, and they went over sideways, _clonk-bong-thud_ , scuffling and snarling on the floor. Pariah cursed and kicked Gloryhog in the back, then kicked Useless for good measure. He was too busy cursing and trying to pry Gloryhog's fingers off his head to notice. The light from above was blocked. Pariah looked up to see Sunbeam peered down at her.

"Get down here, and bring the others with you," she snapped. He withdrew his head. Moments later, two yellow legs appeared, dangled for a moment, then the whole of him came down. Sunbeam stepped away from the hole and looked down at the wrestling pair. Pariah could hear their edges scraping on the floor, their wings flexing and bending like shaken sheet metal, and gasped curses in the middle of it all.

"Perhaps we should stop them?" Sunbeam asked, twining his fingers again, although he didn't seem about to jump to Useless' rescue. Behind him, Deadjet dropped through the hole, landed loudly - Pariah saw fractures appear in his shins - and took a single, measured sidestep. Faintheart followed a moment later, already whimpering at being left alone. The ceiling was so low neither Hunter could stand fully upright.

"Why bother?" Pariah replied. "If we pry them apart, they'll just start again. Idiots, both of them, complete idiots."

At which point Faintheart looked around, opened his optics to their fullest, and screamed.

 

* * *

 

By the time they left the control room, Hystericon had already fled. Misdemeanour wasn't surprised, nor did she expect to see him alive again. Without a word she and Brickhouse returned to the main corridor. She kept her arm-turrets activated, the baton on ready charge and the arc light ready for a blinding flash-burst. Brickhouse, without the room to move freely, kept his guns lowered and walked solidly along behind her. Both knew that if Honeycream came up behind him ... but that wasn't how Honeycream worked.

 _The slag-eater likes to be seen,_ Misdemeanour thought. _He likes that happy little smile before they die._

As they passed the barrack-room she cocked a wing, listening. All she could hear from inside was the standard-issue whining and plainting. No screams, no unusual whimpering.

"Unlock them?" Brickhouse asked quietly.

"No. Not now. If they see us leave, they'll follow. Leave them. If they can't get out of this, they're no use to anyone."

"Tell them?"

"When we get out. I don't want to be trampled to death by a stampede of panicking rejects."

They continued up the main corridor, leaving the rejects locked in the barrack-room. After the first junction above the barrack-room, the corridor turned dark. Honeycream had apparently been sabotaging the lights here too.

 _Why the lights? Why the darkness?_ she wondered. _He wants to be seen, the little creep ..._ Perhaps he didn't want to be seen too soon. _When did he get here? Did he follow the Mayhems? Has he been here for longer?_ The thought of Honeycream wandering around the base whilst she, Brickhouse and poor Overhaul passed the time waiting for new rejects chilled her. _Surely we would have noticed. Surely he would have attacked sooner. He must have followed the Mayhems up, or drifted out of Lantern City..._

The main door was shut and the locks wouldn't respond without the main computer, but Honeycream had either overlooked or ignored the big manual release levers. Misdemeanour stood watchfully, staring into the darkness of the corridors to their left and right and back down into the base as Brickhouse worked the lever, span by span heaving the blast doors back on their runners.

Midday light flooded in, first a thin beam like a sheet of white metal, then a thick wall between her and Brickhouse. Then the door came fully open and a great blast of sunlight lit the base walls into orange light, then poured on down into the depths to fade into the shadows like a reject Seeker. The two of them slipped as unobtrusively as they could around the edges of the door, not wanting to be outlined against the light should someone be watching down in the corridor, down in the darkness.

 _Honeycream doesn't shoot. He's Honeycream, Honey the Knife, Honey the Smile._ Still, there was no point taking a risk.

Out in the sunlight, she allowed herself a momentary visor-blink to look around, just to breathe in the light and space of being above ground. It was always a powerful release after the deep and the dark and the unnatural buriedness of the ex-Autobot base to rise up into the open air, to see the iridescent clouds drifting across the golden sky and feel the soft breezes on her wings. In that moment nobody shot at her and Misdemeanour's ancient instinct told her she was safe. Honeycream was still underground, probably - _hopefully_ \- lost in the maze of dark tunnels and dim pools of light, half-blind and half-stupid with claustrophobia.

With a nod and a synching of battle computers she and Brickhouse transformed and took off, rising up and westward into the golden sky.

 

* * *

 

Useless startled when Faintheart screamed, letting go of Gloryhog's arm and turning to look at the Hunter. Tangled up underneath him Gloryhog squeaked faintly in surprise. Useless stopped looking at Faintheart and actually looked around. Alarmed, he and Gloryhog quickly separated and stood apart, not wanting to come too close to one another but certainly not wanting to touch what was around them.

The dim aisles were lined with drawers, and on each drawer was a plaque, and on each plaque was a name. The aisles lead off into the darkness in all directions, hundreds of drawers in every stack, hundreds of stacks in every aisle, aisles all around ... hundreds of thousands of names, all buried in the darkness, forgotten underground.

"This ... this is a tomb," Useless gasped. Faintheart tried to muffle a sob. "These are all dead Autobots."

"No they're not," Gloryhog disagreed, shaky-voiced. Useless was about to argue, then saw his face. It was the other face, the frightened one, and he was pointing to the plaques. Beside each name was a tiny blazon. "They're all Decepticons like us."

"Yes ... like us," Pariah repeated. "This where they bury the rejects when they die." Hundreds upon hundreds of rejects, dead in the dark ... thousands upon thousands of forgotten, hopeless, useless Seekers. "They came here and starved. And died. And they're still here, down in the dark."

"Look at these names ... " Useless tried not to run his finger along the narrow plates as he read them. "Halfwit ... Knockoff ... Bootlicker ... Milksop ... Crybaby..."

"I don't want to be remembered like this!" Pariah said, optics alarm-wide.

"Nobody will remember them," Deadjet intoned, gloomy as ever.

"How do you think _you're_ going to look down here?" Useless replied with a snap. "Your plaque's going to read 'dead jet'! Well, I'm _not_ going to end up down here! I won't be forgotten in a drawer labelled "Useless"!" He looked around at the five of them, feeling a strange flare of determination flashing up in his core, a feeling so strong it frightened him. He wasn't used to this at all, to determination and leading, or trying to lead, and under the determination he felt as weak and shaky as Faintheart looked. "I am going to leave, and live. Are you with me?"

"Yes," said Sunbeam, edging up towards him.

"I'm not dying down here," Pariah said firmly, crossing her arms - not closing herself off this time, but setting firm against what might be to come. "I'm damned if I'll die in the darkness."

"Hey, I told you from the start, I'm not staying here," Gloryhog replied airily, waving a hand dismissively.

Useless looked at Deadjet and Faintheart, the former still and impassive as a corpse, the later shivering at Pariah's elbow. "Gloryhog, tell us we're all going to get out of here," he said. Gloryhog looked at him, baffled. "Say it. Say it like you mean it. Tell us we're all going to live."

"You're all going to live," Gloryhog said uncertainly.

"No!" Useless snapped. "Like you mean it. Like you ... oh, never mind. Which way, Deadjet?"

The corpselike Seeker started forwards with his slow, deliberate tread, pushing Useless and Gloryhog against the tomb-plaques as he passed and went into the aisle ahead. The Hunter had to fold his broad wings back as he entered, head bowed to avoid hitting the dark ceiling. Useless set off after him, glancing back once to check that Sunbeam was following and once again to see what the others were doing. He could see Pariah behind Sunbeam, and Faintheart's pointy head behind her, but Gloryhog, if he followed, was invisible to his sight.

 

* * *

 

Faintheart's shadow fell on her from behind. Pariah could barely see Sunbeam ahead of her, only making out his sallow wings as he moved against the bluer dimness.

"You would've thought they could have some more lights here," she grumbled.

"Yeah," Useless agreed ahead. "Deadjet, why _is_ it so dark here?"

"We don't deserve light," the Hunter rumbled, dark body invisible to Pariah in the gloam. "We don't deserve sky. We failed. Here to die."

A crossway opened on either side, visible to Pariah only as sudden darkness. Behind her, Faintheart made a sighing sound and shook out his wings for a moment.

"You can do it," she muttered to him. "Can't be that far."

She felt timid fingers rest on her intake. "It's so narrow in here," Faintheart whispered. "I can't stand up. I can't stretch out, I can't turn round, I can't see, I can't hear -" He sounded like he was about to panic.

"Ssh! Don't think about it!" Pariah hushed him. "Don't think about it. Don't think ... just..." She racked her brain for something to distract the Hunter. "Is 'hog behind you?"

There was a pause and an uncertainty of steps as Faintheart tried to look between his vents whilst walking. "Yes. He keeps looking over his shoulder."

The darkness was getting deeper. Pariah could only make Sunbeam out as a paler shape now, and Useless was an even dimmer blur ahead.

"Sigma's Key, does _anyone_ have a lamp?" she hissed as loudly as she dared. The thick darkness between the names of the dead banned loudness, damped and compressed sound, clotted words in the vocaliser.

"I-I sometimes make light," Sunbeam quavered.

"Don't you dare!" Useless snapped. "Don't even try it."

Pariah had to wonder what brought that on, but didn't inquire. This didn't seem the place or the time. "Faintheart? You got a lamp?"

"No," he whispered. He was practically on top of her. They had to keep in step to prevent him from kicking her in the exhaust-nozzles.

"Back _off,_ " she said.

"I'm scared," he whined. She felt him reach out and touch her air-vent again.

"Stop that!" she snapped, and he whimpered. "Oh, for..." They crossed another crossway, and Faintheart gasped behind her again. "How much further?" She tried to raise her voice loud enough for Deadjet to hear, but he didn't respond. She could just make out the sound of Useless whispering it to him.

"This far again," came the bodiless voice in the darkness.

"See, Faintheart?" Pariah whispered between her vents. "Not so far now."

"It's getting darker," he whined.

"Oh, shut up." It was true. She couldn't see the ground in her own shadow, couldn't see Useless at all. Looking back, Faintheart was a dark shape against a far, dim light. She couldn't see Gloryhog, but she could hear him walking behind them. It sounded like he was falling behind. The ceiling seemed to be getting lower, making Faintheart crouch until he was walking stooped over.

"How many drawers in a stack?" she asked him in a low hiss.

There was a pause of several stacks as he counted. "Two hundred and fifty, I think."

"How many stacks in an aisle?"

"I counted a hundred in the first aisle."

 _Two and a half thousand rejects in every aisle_ , she thought, spirits sinking. _Four aisles to the next wall, four more behind ... ten thousand rejects from wall to wall._ "How wide do you think this place is?"

"Don't know."

 _Could be ... what ... fifty aisles wide?_ She whistled. _Five hundred thousand rejects or more._ "How old _is_ this place?" she exclaimed without thinking. _Probably guessed wrong. Must be less. Could be more. How many Seekers came here? Is it just Seekers?_

_How many got out alive?_

Tentatively, she touched a drawer as she passed it, afraid it might spring open and spill out its sad old contents. It remained still and cold, the plaque smooth underfinger, the engraved name legible to the touch.

 _Dimwit ... Slobhull ... Dunderhead ... Groundcrawler ... Leadbrain ..._ The list went on. _Trinket ... Slagpile ... Hollowhead ... Footrest ... Grovellor._

They crossed the third crossway. This time Faintheart didn't react. Pariah wondered if his claustrophobia was getting the better of him. The light was almost gone now, Sunbeam just a sense of movement ahead. The sound of six pairs of pedes trying to walk quietly was more guide than optics now.

She touched the plaques again. Here the names were so old she couldn't read the script by touch, but the blazons were still Decepticon.

"This place is so old," she murmured.

"I think Misdemeanour is very old," Sunbeam whispered to her.

"I've never seen a build like that before," Pariah agreed, although she had to acknowledge, if only to herself, that she was no expert on variant build-types.

"Old," Faintheart agreed in a voice that barely registered on her wings. "Her design is very old."

Pariah touched the plaques again and found she couldn't tell what language they were in. "Are these even Seekers here?" she wondered aloud, fiddling nervously with her hair. Strands came away around her fingers where she worried at it.

She felt Faintheart's hand on her vent, and was surprised to realise he hadn't whimpered since he screamed earlier.

 _[Seekers are old,]_ he told her thought field-contact, though their auras were so weak it was quieter than whispering. _[Seekers go back forever.]_

"Here," Deadjet said leadenly ahead. Pariah almost bumped into Sunbeam as he stopped abruptly. Faintheart's cockpit went _tink_ against her back.

"Get the door open!" she hissed. "What are you waiting for?"

"Orders," Deadjet replied. Pariah frowned; he sounded even slower than usual. Then she heard the door open, and they were moving again.

There was the widening darkness of the crossway, the narrow Autobot-built doorway, and then she walked into pitchy gloom. Faintheart walked into her as she stopped suddenly, pushing her into someone who might or might not be Sunbeam. Gloryhog protested as he bumped into Faintheart, and the door shut behind him.

Then there were was no light at all.

 

* * *

 

A few short breems' flight west of the base, Misdemeanour and Brickhouse landed atop a steep escarpment. There the ground was broken up by time and weather, and they sheltered from the biting north wind in the lee of a ruined tower, hiding from the bitter frost-littered blast that blew down the borderlands of Hermeun and Praxis, bringing glowing mist from the Sea of Light. It came so fast that it was still rich and harsh with the smell of hydrocarbon fuel processing from Valvolux.

They scrabbled amongst the rubble from the fallen towers and the broken buildings until they uncovered the emergency cache, a container twice as big as Misdemeanour. It had taken the full strength of her long-dead sergeant to haul the thing up the escarpment when they'd first come here, and it took her and Brickhouse together to drag it out of its hole and up onto clear ground. Cables still trailed from it into the hole. Opening it unfolded the thing in half, revealing it as an antiquated all-purpose scanner and radio transceiver.

"I told you it was worth the maintenance," Misdemeanour said, aura flicking a smile. The thing was almost as old as she was, yet it still functioned. "We built things to last when I was new."

"No use if nobody can hear the signal," Brickhouse replied, which was his idea of a joke. Misdemeanour waved him away and turned the emergency transceiver on. The power-cell lit up on the first try, which was a good sign, and after a little twiddling with the controls she got a signal. "It _works?_ "

"Don't be rude, Brick," Misdemeanour said, flicking a wing at him. "This is Base Station Mede calling Outpost Isnegnox. Base Station Mede to Outpost Isnegnox, do you receive?" She repeated the signal seven times before the receiver caught a response.

"Base Station Mede, this is Outpost Kngaikra," came an unexpected voice. "Outpost Isnegnox was destroyed eighteen vorns ago. Who are you and what do you want?"

"Outpost Kngaikra, this is Commander Misdemeanour. We are the remittal training station in quadrant V-13, sub-sector 9-O. We have a rogue in our area and request Mayhem team."

"Commander Misdemeanour, we acknowledge. Which rogue have you sighted?"

"Outpost Kngaikra, we have identified the presence of the rogue Honeycream in our territory and we are not equipped to contain him."

"Commander Misdemeanour, please confirm - you saw _Honeycream?_ "

"Outpost Kngaikra, yes, we saw the stab-happy slag-eater. He's had the base technician and is working his way through our rejects. Get that Mayhem team who're supposed to be hunting him off their afts and over here."

There was a long, ominous pause.

"Commander Misdemeanour, I'm getting no response from hunting party seven-three. Are you certain it was _Honeycream?_ "

" _Yes!_ "

The silence came again, longer this time. Misdemeanour felt her fuel-meter sinking with every breem of silence.

"Commander Misdemeanour," rumbled a rich new voice on the same channel.

"Yes?" she said impatiently.

"This is the Outpost Captain Stormforce of Kngaikra. We're unable to contact hunting party leader Facesnapper or any of his team. We're sending a team to their last position to ... find them."

"You mean they're dead." _Great Megatron, Honeycream killed the hunting party before he even got here!_

"We mean we aren't getting radio or transponder response."

"By which you mean they're dead."

"That is a ... possibility." The oil-and-wing-brush voice stopped for a thoughtful moment. "I will send notification to High Command via my superiors, but in the meantime, I recommend you vacate your base."

"You mean you're sending _nobody?_ "

"For a bunch of rejects? Why bother?"

Misdemeanour's aura flared jaggedly, unseen and unheard by distant, faceless Stormforce. "Message received and understood. All out."

"All out."

The channel dwindled into static.

" _Slag-eaters!_ " Misdemeanour screamed. "The entire chain of command between here and the Lord High Commander is nothing but slag-eaters! Argh!" She shook her fists at the golden skies.

"Now what?" Brickhouse asked, still staring down into the rubble-clogged valley and the black gap of the base's main entrance.

Misdemeanour checked the emergency transceiver. "I still have the hardwired connectors. Honeycream may have killed the idiot box, but headless old cache-pack here's too dumb to notice." It took three key-presses to access the base's systems and two more to unlock all the doors.

"Just going to let them all out?"

"It's all the doors or nothing, Brick. Like I said, this thing's headless, needs upgrading even more than I do. It doesn't know what I'm making it do. At least this way they have about as much chance as they deserve. They can get energon and run or get lost and die. Honeycream can do our job for us."

"Batch five isn't filtered."

"Batch five is already dead, remember?"

"Oh yeah."

She patched into the cranky base-wide intercom, finger hovering over the key to activate it. "No," she said to herself, and disconnected the system. "If they're going to get out of there, they do it on their own, the way they _should_ do it."

"Look," Brickhouse said, pointing down at the base.

Below, a Seeker was emerging into the sunlight and the open air.

 

* * *

 

In the utter darkness Pariah reached out for Faintheart, Sunbeam, someone, and felt a hand - cold, brittle, auraless - a dead hand reaching out in the darkness.

"Oh Sigma," she gasped, stepping backwards. A body pressed against her, quite dead, creaking as she touched it. She heard the neck-tensors groan as the head moved, and jumped aside.

She hit something that shrieked and realised it was Faintheart. He clung to her and she could hear his wings quivering.

"What's going on?" Useless asked. Pariah heard two steps, a scream, a stumble, a bump, and another scream.

"It's only me," Sunbeam said from near Useless' second scream.

"Where the smelt are we? Where's the door?" Useless asked, sounding rattled.

"Ossuary," Deadjet sounded, a bodiless voice.

 _Corpse-house,_ Pariah thought. "Great Vector Sigma! This - this is where they keep the dead bodies."

That caused silence, apart from Faintheart's shivering wings. It was so black even the glow of their optics was faint to the edge of invisible. Pariah realised she was fuel-famished.

"Are you saying," Useless began in a deliberate and frightened voice, "that we are in a room full of dead rejects?"

"Dead someones," Pariah muttered, prying her arm out of Faintheart's grip the best she could without touching anything else in the dark. Feeling around on the floor with her pede, she felt the edge of a wing, and an arm, and then a hand, all quite dead. "Where's Deadjet?"

"Deadjet's turned his optics off," Useless replied. "I've got Sunbeam here. Where's Gloryhog?"

"I'm here," Gloryhog said, very quiet. "I'm ... I'm standing against the wall. I - something moved between me and Faintheart."

"Pariah? Where are you?" Useless said. "If we can hold onto each other, we can find the door."

"How's that going to help? We'll just be going back the way we came," Pariah protested, reaching out blindly for his hand.

"Not _that_ door, the _other_ door," he replied. Fingertips brushed. Pariah grabbed and missed.

"You mean we've got to walk through _th-this?_ " Faintheart mewled.

"You want to go back and starve?" Pariah hissed. She felt around with her wings and found only Faintheart. "Don't stand so close," she whispered to him, but he clung tight anyway. She reached out again and felt a living hand. "Got you. I think."

"That's me," Useless replied. "Got a free hand?"

"No, Faintheart's got the other one. Faintheart, get 'hog."

"But-but there are dead things -" he wailed.

"'hog! Grab Faintheart or we'll never get out!" Pariah said as loudly as she dared.

"I'm not taking ord - oh, blast it." There was clinking in the dark. Faintheart shrieked and jumped. "It's _me_ , you oversized glider." Faintheart subsided into mumbles.

"Right," Useless said ahead. "Sunbeam, grab Deadjet."

"Oh happy day," Sunbeam murmured.

"Just get him, or we'll be groping in the dark until Homestar turns cold!" Pariah hissed.

There were quiet patting-clinking sounds. "I can't find him," Sunbeam said fearfully. "All ... all I can feel is dead things."

"Deadjet, where the smelt are you?" Useless seethed, voice crackling with strain. "Deadjet?"

"You don't think he _is_ , do you?" Pariah asked.

"Probably," Gloryhog said at the back. "I know I can find the door from here."

"Fine, go back and starve," Useless snapped. "We don't need you anyway."

"Hey, it was me that got us out here!" Gloryhog snarled, although it sounded strange since he was trying to keep his voice down.

"Idiots!" Pariah groaned. "Don't start fighting in here of all places."

"I've got a dead Hunter," Sunbeam said, both voice and wings audibly shaking. "He's standing up. I think it's Deadjet."

Deadjet groaned. His voice came from nowhere near Sunbeam.

"Oh dear," Sunbeam said. "Who am I holding?"

"Never mind who you're holding," Useless said, and Pariah heard a clink that must've been him tugging on Sunbeam. "You've got a free hand, get Deadjet."

"Do I have to?" Sunbeam pleaded.

"Yes!" Useless hissed. "We're stuck in here until you do!"

Clinking and patting and Sunbeam's whimpers were the only sounds. Pariah's aura shrank in concentration as she listened. The total blackness of the room pressed close. It seemed terribly warm, and the air was foul with dust and age.

"Say something, Deadjet," she whispered. "Tell him where you are."

"Here," came the voice.

"I can't reach him!" Sunbeam quavered. "He's too far away."

"Well, everyone move up," Useless said in a voice that suggested he might one day be able to give an order. Pariah moved towards him in the dark, Faintheart sticking close behind.

"I can't feel the wall anymore!" Gloryhog protested.

"Doesn't matter," Pariah told him. "We're not going back that way."

"That's me," said Deadjet.

"Oh, good." Sunbeam was audibly shaking, wings almost rattling. "I - I felt faces and they were dead but they weren't yours." At her elbow, Faintheart suppressed a squeaky noise. His hand tightened around her wrist, squeezing. She was surprised at how strong he was.

"Never mind the dead, they can't hurt us. Let's get _out_ of here." Useless sounded shaken now. "Deadjet, the _door!_ "

She heard Deadjet moving, his big feet sliding across the floor, shoving dead things out of the way, and then more footsteps. Useless moved away and pulled on her arm. She tugged on Faintheart and heard Gloryhog move behind him. Dead hands brushed her. Dead wings touched hers. Her pedes bumped against legs and bodies that gave less response than the living ground. One step at a time they felt their way amongst the corpses, sliding and scraping and tugging and clinging.

Pariah felt a dead hand brush her shin. A dead head turned under her pede when she stepped over it. A wing pushed out and rubbed her thigh, and she bit her glossa in revulsion. Faintheart made a shaky sound behind her. He too had felt that dead face under his thrusters. She could hear someone gasping in fear, and was surprised to realise it wasn't Faintheart but Gloryhog behind him, dangling at the back of the line in the darkness.

"What is it, 'hog?" she asked, whispering under the pressure of the lightlessness.

"I-I felt a dead face, and it smiled," was the shaky reply.

"It's _dead_ ," she seethed, voice so quiet she wasn't sure he'd hear.

"Sometimes the dead walk," Gloryhog whispered. "I heard -"

"Smelt!" Useless hissed. "Dead things do _not_ move!" Pariah felt his hand tighten on her forearm. "The dead do _not_ walk. Zombies only exist in movies and stories and only a neophyte would believe in them."

"Yes," said Deadjet.

Somewhere in the dark, something shifted and creaked. Someone whimpered, she wasn't sure who. There was a scrabbling sound at the back of the line, and Gloryhog jumped forwards against Faintheart.

"Something's grabbing at me!" he whimpered. "Find the _door!_ " A hiss sounded in the darkness, like gas releasing from a punctured canister, or perhaps a low and malice-ridden sound from a dead thing woken.

Useless yanked on her arm, almost pulling her off her feet. "On, on, on!" he hissed. She could hear Deadjet practically marching on, crushing parts of dead bodies under his feet. The whimpering was behind her and she didn't know who it was or even if it was one of them or something else in the darkness. A dead hand reached out of the blackness and grabbed at her shoulder, hooked around her chest, and a whole forearm tumbled between her arm and side, fingers plucking at her leg as it fell. A head, kicked up under Useless' pedes, tumbled between her shins and was crushed under Faintheart's feet.

Then there was a white light shining ahead, and it widened and brightened until she was almost blind, and she realised it was the door.


	3. Chapter 3

Useless stumbled out of the room of dead things and into a place that seemed huge and bright after it.

"Goodness me!" Sunbeam exclaimed, blinking in the brightness. "It's the energon dispenser!" Useless had to reset his optics a couple of times to adjust to the sudden light and smacked into Deadjet as he stumbled forwards. Then he could see.

They were in a corridor that sloped right and down into darkness and left to a ramp that turned back and up into slightly less darkness. Before them, mockingly bright, was the energon dispenser.

"Those clinker-winged ball-bearing-breakers!" Gloryhog exclaimed, sounding as loud as a shout after the silence of the room of plaques and the silence of the dead things. "They did it on purpose! They put that thing right there so anyone who wanted to refuel would have to crawl through those - those -" He stopped and shuddered, looking over his shoulder at the door.

"Well, smelt 'em," Useless gasped, running his air-filters fast to get rid of the foul old air of the ossuary, not wanting to admit to the same fear in the dark as Gloryhog. He went over to the dispenser and looked at it. It was of a totally unfamiliar design - no buttons, no cube-slot, no place to connect a cable. There was a single conical thing in the middle of it, under the broad light-panel that read "Energon Dispenser" in very clear lettering. "Deadjet, how the smelt do you use this thing?"

Deadjet stood silent and still. Pariah nudged him. "Deadjet?

"He ... isn't, is he?" Sunbeam wondered, shuffling a little closer to Useless. "He felt dead when I touched him."

"He felt dead when I kicked him earlier, and he doesn't feel any different now," Pariah replied, giving Deadjet a sharp poke in the costa. He groaned.

Useless suddenly felt like a complete idiot. "Deadjet, turn your radio on."

"No." Deadjet's voice was weak now, slower than ever.

Useless had a sudden revolting thought that Deadjet was indistinguishable from the bodies in the ossuary. _What if they were all alive? What if it was full of Deadjets? What if they come out?_ "Can we lock that door?" he said without thinking.

Pariah poked at the door-panel. "Odd. The locks are disabled."

"What?" Sunbeam and Faintheart squeaked together.

"It says here 'Locking System Override', and it just flashes when I push anything."

"Oh smelt. We'd better hurry," Useless fretted. "Deadjet, turn your radio on and data-synch with me. Then you won't need to speak for a while." A pause. "Do it!"

Deadjet shifted enough to look at him. His optics were barely lit above the black. The veins of rotten copper on his thigh were starting to split, exposing circuit-mesh beneath, and oozing fractures had appeared in his afterburners. Little chips were missing from his torso and the peeling that all of them suffered around the joints had turned to outright flaking. He looked like a zombie.

_Perhaps he_ is _a zombie,_ Useless thought. He felt a flutter of radio contact, and synched with Deadjet. There was a burst of information - the map of the base, the instructions for the dispenser, more - and then silence. Deadjet went dead again.

"We should have done that ages ago," Useless muttered. He knew exactly where he was now, and that the left-hand path led up to a branch off the main corridor, just across from the barrack-room door, and that the front door was only a little way up the slope from there. "All right! Now we're getting somewhere. Now, everyone, synch with _me_."

"Why should we synch with you? You give me the data and I'll synch with everyone else," Gloryhog argued.

"Why waste time?" Pariah snapped, still trying to pry Faintheart's hand off her arm.

"Hey, I was the one who made this plan, I was the one who got us to the dispenser, just like I said I would!"

"Smelt you did!" Useless snapped, facing Gloryhog but unwilling to step away from the dispenser, as if just standing in front of it gave him some control over the energon.

"You keep your nosecone out of this, grey-face!" Gloryhog snapped. He took first one step towards Useless, away from the door to the vault of dead things, and then one step back, as if he couldn't decide which was more distasteful.

"Grey-face? You're as grey as the rest of us!" Pariah seethed. "Stop wasting time and synch with the rest of us."

Useless was about to agree, then noticed it wasn't true. Deadjet was dead-grey still, and Faintheart remained that dirty pale grey, but dim blue hints were creeping into his own armour. Sunbeam still clung to his faded yellowish tones, and Pariah was tinged with dim brownish-redness. Gloryhog had lost his brittle iridescence, descending into grey-blue darkness.

"You do _not_ give orders to me!" Gloryhog snapped, turning on her. He swung a fist at her, staggering her backwards. As he closed to elbow her in the face, she punched him in the side. Gloryhog grabbed her hair and yanked hard, pulling her down and sideways. Pariah shrieked and kicked him behind the knee, at the same time driving the heel of her hand into his face. They grappled, Gloryhog trying to get an arm-lock on Pariah as she tried to pry his fingers out of her hair.

Then, with the brittle ripping of adhesive giving way, her hair came off in his hand.

Gloryhog stared surprised at the clump of shiny wire in his hand. Pariah kicked him in the back of the knee again and he fell backwards onto his aft.

"It came off!" he said in surprise. "I thought it was connected right into your brain."

"It's _decoration_ ," Pariah said tersely, ripping off the clump on the other side of her helm with a sour expression. "It's held on with _glue_."

"But - then - how does it work?" Gloryhog seemed quite stunned, and looked from the hair in his hand to Pariah, now pulling the hair from the back of her helm.

"It doesn't _do_ anything. It's just there to look pretty, and you've gone and wrecked it now." Glowering, she snatched her hair out of his hand and tossed all three clumps of it into her cockpit. Without it, there were only dark patches of dry, flaking adhesive on her helm to show the hair had ever been there. "It'll take me ages to get it all back on right."

"Well, you didn't have to take the other bits off," Sunbeam offered.

"What, and walk around one-third bald and two-thirds hairy? I'd look like an idiot!"

"You looked like an idiot to start with," Useless said. "It looked your brain-wiring was falling out."

Pariah made a disparaging sound. "Are we going to data-synch or not?" she asked, glaring at Gloryhog.

"Fine, fine, whatever," he grumbled, getting up and rubbing his knee. "I don't know why I let you lot tag along with me."

"Oh, shut up and switch your radio on," Pariah groused, initiating radio contact. Sunbeam joined, Faintheart followed, Gloryhog engaged with a sullen blart of static, and Useless transmitted the data.

"We're opposite the barrack-room!" Pariah exclaimed.

"We went through all that when we could've gone out the door?" Gloryhog yelped.

"What a bother," Sunbeam sighed.

Shrugging, Useless turned back to the energon dispenser. He knew what he had to do to use it, he just didn't want to. _Well, it's this or starve,_ he thought, which made it easier. He took hold of the nozzle and pulled, and it came away from the wall on a long cable. Grimacing, Useless pushed the nozzle into his mouth and down his ingestion conduit. The filter-thing Overhaul had installed came to life and whirred, and Useless felt revolted at the sensation of the thing buzzing away inside him. Then it grabbed the nozzle and locked onto it. He felt a gush of hot energon flood into his fueltank and heard Pariah laugh at the startled sound he made.

_[It's not funny!]_ he radioed. _[Just you wait and see what it's like.]_

He tried not to count the quarts as he drank, knowing his allowance was small, but drank the lot anyway. The nozzle came loose and he pulled it of his throat, still grimacing. "Urgh."

"Bad energon?" Sunbeam asked, touching his elbow. Useless wasn't sure if he sought to reassure or be reassured.

"Energon's fine, but this thing is horrible." He passed it off to Sunbeam. "Drink everything you can. As soon as we're fuelled, we're _leaving_."

 

* * *

 

The _thump_ from the door got Dullwretch's attention, enough to make him look up from the blank console. There had been some scratchy, scrapey noises from the door recently, but nobody told him to do anything, so he didn't. He just sat and sat without thinking. Sitting without thinking was his main occupation. It beat activity out by far.

The door opened.

Dullwretch looked up again.

The door closed behind a shape that brought every seated reject to their feet and a few standing rejects to their knees.

The Seeker at the door was beautiful. His pedes and his hands and the edges of his wings glowed with a deep warm colour like shaded places in afternoon sunlight, almost as if they were lit from within. His shins and his arms and his trim were of a soft colour Dullwretch didn't know a name for - a deep tone, like gold, yet softer, richer, thicker. It was the kind of golden-brown that Dullwretch felt he could almost swim in, could touch the colour with his hands and feel it soft and sticky between his fingers. Light seemed to flow out of it, a heady light that attracted the optics and held the gaze. The Seeker's thighs and his vents and his wings were a pale colour, not quite white - warm, like the rest of him, warm like sunlight, and soft. It was the warm-white of pale towers under sunlight, like a far horizon welcoming him home.

Inside and through all of this warmth and light was the smile on his face, the soft smile - soft like his colours, warm like the light of him, touchable. It seemed it should be soft under the fingertips, and not soft with yielding weakness, but soft with welcome, soft-enfolding, soft-protecting. Soft, it said, soft to hide you, soft to hold you, soft to warm the life-pain away. Dullwretch wanted - suddenly, more than anything, more than everything, with a force of desire stronger than any faint feeling in his life before - to touch that smile, to bask in that light.

Dullwretch was dimly aware that he was moving, stumbling towards the beautiful Seeker, and that others were moving with him. Knees weak and legs shaking, he stood before the Seeker whose smile promised bliss, wing to wing with others, trembling in hope and longing.

He watched, struck dumb and still, as the soft-warm-smile curved up a little more. Soft-warm-welcome, it said, warmth and safety, come home to me now. An intense feeling seared through Dullwretch, out from his core to his wings and his face and his thrusters in a great longing ache, struck him to his knees, made him moan. He heard other soft cries, other rejects dropping to their knees, hands like his raised to the beautiful Seeker in longing, in hoping, in wanting.

He looked up at the smile and the light that promised such wonderful things, and his gaze did not waver to see the knife in the Seeker's hand, nor did his smile so much as flicker as he felt the blade passing through his throat.

Hot energon gushed out of his new smile, pouring down his chest, warm and sticky between his thighs. The shining one smiled on him and him alone, welcoming warmth, and as every so much less thing faded away, Dullwretch felt a soft bliss descending: the smile was just for him.   
  


* * *

 

"What if the door's open?" Faintheart asked as they all stood at the bottom of the ramp.

"Why would it be open?" Pariah asked, poking him in the side. Even with her tank half-full of good hot fuel the thought of being spotted by Brickhouse or Misdemeanour was daunting to the point of paralysis.

"Someone'd better take a look," Useless said, peering around the edge of the corridor.

"Get on it, scout," Gloryhog smirked.

"Shut up, 'hog," Useless spat between his vents. "Pariah, you look."

"Me? Why me?" she exclaimed, startled.

Useless reached back and touched her on the arm. _[Because Sunbeam and Faintheart are too shaken and Gloryhog's unreliable.]_

_[Do it yourself then.]_

_[Together?]_

_[Fine!]_

Together they crept onto the ramp. It was dark, although nowhere near the sightless pitch of the ossuary, and Pariah felt awfully exposed. Backs pressed to opposite walls they crouched and crept up the shallow incline.

The light outside the barrack-room flared over the edge of the ramp. Useless covered his optics for a moment and Pariah reset her visual array. It seemed terribly bright. They exchanged glances and continued to creep upwards.

The door was shut.

Pariah allowed her aura to flicker with relief. Useless looked back and beckoned to Sunbeam, peering nervously around the edge of the corridor.

"Come on," Pariah hissed to the others.

The six of them shuffled as quietly as they could towards the junction, optics fixed on the bloom of light and the closed door. The darkness remained still behind them, the gloom still ahead. The air was breathless, moveless. Pariah winced at every scraping of pede-edge on floor-plate. As quietly as they could they sidled up until Pariah felt her wingtip poke out into the corridor, and her aura flashed with alarm.

Useless and Sunbeam stared. Faintheart looked around his vent at her, optics fear-wide.

As slowly as she dared Pariah slid along the wall, poking her wingtip further and further into the light.

There was no shout. No gunshot. No footstep. There was no brush of aura, no simmering edge of energy-field.

_They could be waiting around the corner. They could be waiting until I move._ She wondered if she dared power up her Sigma cell. She froze, afraid, fuel-pump still in her chest.

"Cowards, the lot of you," Gloryhog muttered at the back, and strode openly between them and out into the corridor. "See? Nobody's here."

Faintheart rattled his vents and pointed at the floor. Gloryhog looked down, startled, and stumbled back into the tunnel.

A thin trail of energon was leaking out from under the barrack-room door.

"They're killing the others!" Faintheart whimpered.

"Ssh! Don't let them hear us!" Pariah hissed as loudly as she dared.

Useless nodded. _[Quietly as you can, move. Up the corridor, and out. Now.]_

If they're in there, they're not out here, Pariah reasoned, and swung around the corner as fast as she dared. She didn't wait for the others, but every cautious footstep of hers and theirs behind her echoed like a gunshot. _They must hear us, they must!_ She wanted to run but didn't dare.

She risked a glance back. Useless was behind her and she could see Deadjet some way back ... and Faintheart lingering at the door? _Come on, you great fool_ , she thought, turning back to the climb.

She crossed the next junction and suddenly realised there could have been anything waiting in the turn-offs. Her fuel-pump hammered hard enough to crack as her battle systems tried to come online twenty microbreems ago. She had to stand to one side and let Useless past as she shut down the internal alarms. Sunbeam dipped his wings with something like respect as he passed her. Gloryhog ignored her, staring bitterly at Useless. She waited until Deadjet was past to check on Faintheart. He was following.

Then they were moving again, climbing towards the second junction. Pariah expected Brickhouse to appear out of the dark at any moment, or for a shout to go up behind them, or for the sound of shots, or for the half-open door ahead to suddenly slam closed.

_[Why's the door open?]_ she asked.

_[Don't know,]_ Useless replied up at front. _[Can't see anything.]_

Gloryhog said nothing. His feet were leaving little energon-spots on the floor with every step. In front of her Deadjet was dragging his feet, each step fractionally slower than the last. Pariah gave him a shove in the back. A large part of her didn't care what happened to him, as long as she was safe, but a part of her that felt new, or at least just recently awoken, suggested that he was more useful alive than dead.

The light ahead pulled on them like a magnet. Pariah could see a scrap of sky appearing, and the scrap became a patch of golden sky bestrewn with tattered clouds. Each step seemed lighter as the darkness fell back until she was almost treading on thin air.

Then Useless' dark back turned bright and he was through the door, then Sunbeam flared golden, Gloryhog blared colour, Deadjet got out of her way and she was through into the space and the sunlight.

_At last!_

"Out!" Sunbeam cried, jumping in the air in joy as the daylight bathed them. He spun around in a circle, sunlight flaring gold and orange on his wings, his face flickering, almost smiling.

"Don't smile!" Useless yelped, bringing an arm up to cover his optics, but nothing happened. "What? Sunbeam, why didn't..." Sunbeam just shrugged, beaming happily up at the sky.

"Ssh!" Gloryhog hissed, glaring darkly at Useless. Deadjet strode like an automaton into the sunlight and sat down heavily amongst the debris. Pariah scrambled up onto a pile of junk to look around.

The base lay in a valley between two slope-sided cliffs. She could see the broken stumps of towers on the west ridge and could feel the wind that moaned between then. There ruins of some great building stood silently upon the east ridge. Behind them, to the north, the ridges merged into a single cliff, and Pariah could see the insides of rooms and corridors where the ground had broken, sliding down to form the low place where they were now. All around was debris and rubble from where the ground had subsided, down towards where the ridges stopped sharply and a broad, broken plain spiked with broken columns opened out. A soft breeze tumbled down the north slope, ruffling across their wings and teasing them with the smell of crude oil. Above, the sky was the colour of new bronze, Homestar bright as a drop of molten gold as it descended from zenith, and ragged brass-dark clouds scuttered quickly eastwards. In the distance, in the haze and the heat-shimmer, Pariah could just make out something glittering in the distance between two darker smears.

"That's the City of Lanterns," Useless said, climbing up beside her. "Those dark places are hills - old cities, I guess. There aren't any names on the map."

"If we flew, we could be there in less than three cycles," Pariah said, ready to jump into the air herself. "Can we all transform? Or do we fly like this?" She looked at Deadjet to see what he said, but he was sitting still as the dead.

A whimper caught their attention.

There was someone curled up in the ditch behind the pile they stood on - a pale standard-build with down-position wings - and he was balled up like a prisoner sobbing himself silly.

"Who the smelt are you?" Useless exclaimed, almost falling off the heap of rubble in surprise.

The reject flinched, almost kneeing himself in the chin in shock. "Hys-hys-hystericon sir!" His wide optics stared, wild with fright, and he sobbed as he spoke. "E-e-eee-veryone's dead! They're all dead! Everyone! Everyone! Thethe-thhheeey were dead in the corridors and in the repair bay and the bodies were all there and and and there was energon all over the-hee-eee -" He broke off into wailing and tried to burrow down into the rubble.

"Where did he come from?" Gloryhog asked of no one. In the ditch Hystericon wobbled to his knees, wailed aloud, then clawed his way over the junk heap, clattering onto the ground. "Shut him up before he brings the base crew down on us!"

"They-they-they're _dead!_ " Hystericon wailed. "Aaa-aa-aall dead, everyone. The-the-there was a Sus-s-ss-Seeker aaa-ana-and they - they - they said -" He gulped to a stop and crawled down the path, away from the base, wings shaking in terror. "They-ey-ey-ey said hu-hu- _Honeycream_ is here."

" _What?_ " Pariah yelled without thinking. " _Honeycream?_ "

"Oh dear," Sunbeam said softly.

"What, Honey the Smile?" Gloryhog asked.

"Smelt!" Useless swore.

"They _are_ all dead," said Faintheart.

"Huh?" went Useless.

"What?" Pariah asked again.

Hystericon snivelled again, sobbed, made a hiccupping noise as if his fuel-pump was trying to run backwards, and then scrambled up, took two running steps and threw himself into the air.

They watched, bemused, thoughts scattered, as the grey jet gained height and speed, heading towards Lantern City. Then his thrusters sputtered. He shuddered.

"Oh no," Pariah said to herself.

Hystericon's engines failed. Pariah heard him wail as he hung for a moment, sank nose-first, and began to dive. He was still wailing when he hit the ground.

There was no ball of fire, no self-pyre - just a crunch, and the sight of his shattering, and the tinkle of a short rain of debris.

"Not enough fuel," Deadjet groaned.

"Everyone's dead?" Useless asked Faintheart.

"Yes," Faintheart said, wringing his hands as if he was trying to get a stain off.

"Now, now - hey," Gloryhog, closest to the door, turned around. "There's someone coming!" He looked at Pariah then both of them looked to Useless.

"Err - hide?" he yelped, jumping down behind the debris-heap. Pariah jumped down too and found herself wing-overlapping-wing with Useless in the ditch behind the heap, both crouched down as small as they could. Pariah saw Gloryhog scramble up the slope of debris by the door and vanish around the lintel. Glancing to her right, she saw Sunbeam slip between two piles of scrap, and Faintheart was nowhere to be seen. She hoped he hadn't bolted or frozen.

Deadjet was sitting perfectly still.

Before she had a chance to call to him, or even move, she head footsteps at the door, and ducked down as flat as she could.

The footsteps came on, steady and confidant. Out of the door, and she heard them clearly now. Whoever it was couldn't be Misdemeanour with feet that heavy, nor Brickhouse with feet that light. Overhaul? Someone else? She didn't know.

The steps stopped - still for a moment - and then started again. Whoever it was now walked towards Deadjet. Pariah froze. She was desperate to risk a glance, to take a look, but her systems were locked up in terror. _It's Honeycream. It's Sigma-damned_ Honeycream _. We're all dead jets._ Beside her, she felt Useless shift just a little. _If he can do it, I can do it!_ With that, she forced herself to move, just a tiny bit, fraction-by-fraction raising her head.

There was a Seeker leaning over Deadjet, a golden and off-white Seeker with energon spattered all over him. It dripped off his hands and ran down his feet, it trailed behind him in wet cables that went down into the base, and it especially ran off the long knife in his right hand.

_It_ is _Honeycream. Oh Sigma, we're all going to die._

He was leaning over Deadjet, facing away from them, and he was prodding Deadjet gently with a sticky purple finger. Then he straightened up and looked around.

Pariah ducked down again. She suddenly realised that, if Honeycream took off here, he was bound to see them. _And then we're dead._ She had no idea what to do. Glancing at Useless, he gave her a worried glance and shook his head a little. _Clueless as well as useless. Great Vector Sigma, we're all dead._

Further down the slope, something rattled. She heard Honeycream take a few steps in the direction of the sound. First a few steps on firm ground - then another clatter in the distance - and then quick steps down the slope.

Pariah waited, listening to the footsteps grow quieter and quieter, further and further away. Honeycream seemed to be tracking backwards and forwards across the lower slope, seeking the source of the now-ceased sounds. Finally, his steps grew completely inaudible in the distance.

The silence opened out. There was no noise in the afternoon sunlight, not even the faintest susurration of distant engines from the City of Lanterns. Even the wind was silent, the little north breeze fluttering noiselessly across her back. Pariah remained still, hunched, watching as Homestar edged a little further towards the eastern hill.

Was he gone? Was he back? Was he standing silently on the other side of the junk heap, waiting with the knife, waiting with the smile?

Almost a whole joor passed in silence, waiting, fearing. Pariah no longer had to look upwards to see Homestar as it began to tip down the sky into mid-afternoon.

Useless poked her with a finger. "I can't get up until you move," he whispered. "Your wing is on top of mine."

"Idiot," she whispered back, but slowly edged herself up into a crouch.

"It's quite safe," Gloryhog said above them. She looked up sharply. He was leaning over the edge of the door, flat against the rubble. "He's gone all the way down the slope, into that thicket of pipes there." He pointed. Standing up cautiously, Pariah could see the place he meant, a dark piece of low ground near the base of the eastern ridge where hundreds of thick pipes rose up out of the ground. She couldn't see any sign of Honeycream.

"Are you sure?" she asked warily.

"I've been watching him all the time," Gloryhog replied. "He's gone."

"Phew," Useless said, rising up beside her. "Was that really _Honeycream?_ "

"Yup," Gloryhog said, carefree as an Autobot. "What, never seen the pictures?"

"Seen, but never thought ... " Useless shuddered. " _Honeycream_. Is that why we're here? To be killed by him?"

"He's a rogue," Pariah replied. "He must've come across the place by accident."

"More likely followed someone here," Gloryhog shrugged.

"If he comes back, we're all dead," Pariah said aloud.

"You're a real fresh wind, aren't you?" Useless grumbled.

Faintheart poked his head out from between two mounds of junk further down the slope. Pariah waved to him, casting worried glances into the pipe thicket. He hurried up to her side and grabbed her elbow clingingly. "I threw scrap," he said, vents gasping. "I saw him, and I threw bits of scrap down the slope."

_So that's what caused the noises,_ Pariah realised. "Good - good idea, Faintheart."

"Hey, what did you mean, everyone's dead?" Useless asked the Hunter.

"I - " He stopped and looked awkward.

Down the slope, Sunbeam crawled out of a ditch and trotted up to them.

"Go on," Pariah said, poking him in the turbofan.

" I - I was built to be a repair technician," Faintheart said in a rush. "I'm good at the theory but the insides ... ugh ... I have this, umm, I can sense ... my Sigma power ... I - I could feel, at the door - the life-force, rushing out - they were dying. All of them." It was the longest thing Pariah had heard him say.

"You're an _empath?_ " Gloryhog laughed.

"Not really," Faintheart said, wringing his hands again. "Only when ... when the life-force gets out."

Useless shrugged. "Whatever. Let's get out of here."

"Wait," Pariah said. "Deadjet's not moving." She slithered down the heap of debris, expecting Useless to follow. Gloryhog propped himself up on his elbows and ignored them, staring out at the pipe thicket. Pariah had no problem with him playing sentry, as long as he actually told them if he saw something.

Deadjet sat motionless. There were spatters of energon flecking his chest, but no visible damage.

"Dead? Deadjet, are you operational?" she asked, poking his side.

If Deadjet's optics were on the glow was so weak it was invisible in the sunlight. He groaned, slow as time spent in fear, " _Weak._ "

She shook Deadjet's shoulder. "Come on, Deadjet, get up. Get _up!_ What's wrong with you?"

Faintheart let go of her elbow and, flinching, reached out to Deadjet's chest. Gingerly, he rested his right hand on the corpselike torso, walking his fingers over Deadjet's chest. Pariah looked up at him. His look of worry and fear was creased by a frown of concentration. Faintheart placed his left hand on Deadjet's forehead, palm across his brow.

"He's starving," Faintheart said. "I mean, he's dying of it. He's run out of fuel completely." His aura flickered like a sine wave. "Fading ... he's almost ... nothing." He took his hands off Deadjet. Pariah could hear his wings shaking.

"You can tell - just by touching him? - what, how much energon he has?" Without thinking, Pariah grabbed her elbow where he'd clung to her.

Faintheart looked down at his dark hands, twisting his fingers together. "I was designed to repair Seekers. I - I know where - I can feel the ... breakages."

"That's your gift?"

Faintheart winced, and wouldn't look at her. "I - I suppose so."

Sunbeam backed into him. Faintheart jumped and squeaked. Pariah looked over Sunbeam's wing and saw Gloryhog and Useless staring each other down like commander and lieutenant.

"Not _again_ ," she cursed.   
  


* * *

 

Useless stood king-of-the-hill atop the heap of debris, watching Gloryhog slowly, slowly creep forward as he crouched atop the base door. He glared at the liar as if he could drill holes in his face with the power of his gaze, curling his fingers around thin air as if he could grip the fabric of it and pull it out from under his rival.

"Not _again_ ," Pariah groaned somewhere on his right. Useless didn't break his stare, nor did Gloryhog waver. "Idiots. You two stop that. We need to get out of here before Honeycream comes back."

"I say we leave Gloryhog behind as a present for him," Useless said slowly, sinking his fingers into clear air. It had weight in his hands, it had thickness. He felt as if he could push his fingers through the air and into something else.

"I'm going to twist your head off and take it with me to Polyhex," Gloryhog replied, fingers curling around a length of pipe.

"I'm going to twist your _arms_ off, 'hog, and force them down your ingestion conduit," Useless replied. The air in his hands felt almost solid now, soft like a warm plastic, yielding in his hands.

"I know the Air Commander and he'll break you in half for even suggesting that," Gloryhog said.

"You - "

Gloryhog sprang, one arm outstretched, the other swinging a length of pipe. Useless moved a split-second after Gloryhog did, jumping off the debris and grabbing his rival in mid-air. The pipe swung over his shoulder, clonked on his back, and they fell sideways onto the path, their impact shaking the ground and sending a scree of debris sliding down all the slopes around. Useless felt a wing bend and spring straight, and drove his knee into Gloryhog's side. Gloryhog swore at him, grabbed him by the helm, trying to twist his head off. Useless punched him in the arms and kneed his sides, making loud ringing sounds.

He distantly heard Sunbeam saying "Shouldn't we stop them?"

"Let them sort it out between themselves," Pariah replied a thousand kilohister away. "I've had enough of their rubbish."

Useless got a hand to Gloryhog's face and clawed, trying to jam his fingers into the liar's optics whilst trying to pull his right arm from underneath Gloryhog. Gloryhog twisted, trying to bite him, at the same time scrabbling at Useless' face. Useless hooked a leg around Gloryhog and rolled, trying to pin him down. Gloryhog kicked, rocking them both backwards and forwards, wings slapping the ground with a sound like dropped sheet metal. Useless got a thumb in his mouth and bit - Gloryhog yelled and punched him in the face with his free hand - Useless unpinned his right arm and tried to get an arm-lock on Gloryhog, but ended up grabbing his forearm. Gloryhog got his legs free and pulled himself to his knees, dragging Useless with him. Snarling, Useless tried to grab Gloryhog's throat. Gloryhog blocked, engines growling, and they grappled again.

Then Useless felt fear. Deep-welled fear pooling through his mind, rushing upwards, and he saw the light in Gloryhog's optics.

_He's going to kill me,_ Useless thought. Like a rusted switch finally giving in to terrible force, something shifted inside him. His fingers gripped air, soft as plastic, malleable, it yielded and broke.

Violent flames billowed, sky-blue, cold as death.

He saw Gloryhog's sudden horror, the movement of shock that threw them both apart, Gloryhog scrambling away on his back leaving Useless on his knees. Gas-flame blue the fire bloomed around his hands, licking up towards his elbows, beautiful flames, shivering, spreading down his arms, so cold frost was forming on his chest. Useless stared at the fire, raising his hands up to his face to gaze at the dancing flames, sky-blue, ice-blue, shifting through a personal kaleidoscope, his own spectrum from deepest evening shades to a blue so pale it was almost white.

" _Useless!_ "

The fire had reached his elbows, and little tongues of azure lapped at his shoulders. The cold was reaching inside him, down towards his core. He was shaking and didn't know how to stop.

" _Idiot!_

Something black whipped past his face, sucked the air away, lashed the flames in its path, dashed on and there was a deep boom somewhere on his left. Entirely distracted, Useless looked over to see a section of the west ridge suddenly collapse, sending walls and floors and girders and pillars tumbling down into the pits and heaps above the base. Then he stared at his hands.

The flames were out.

Useless stared at his hands, bereft and emptied. Slowly, his fingers curled up, feeling none of the warm, bendable, breakable air. His wings started to tremble. He slumped, sat backwards and curled up in a tight ball, wrapping his shaking wings around him. Hiding his face under his arms, he desperately bit down on his glossa and tried not to cry.

Someone kicked him in the side.

" _Useless!_ " Pariah yelled in his audio, shaking him by the vents. "What was - what happened?"

"He could have killed me!" Gloryhog shouted. He was curled up in the doorway, trying to hide inside it. "He could have killed me with that!"

"Shut it!" Pariah snapped. "For Sigma's sake!"

"He's _mad!_ " Gloryhog yelled back. "He's as bad as Honeycream!"

"I don't think so," Sunbeam said gently.

"You keep your nosecone out of this, crawler," Gloryhog snarled arrogantly, although he didn't uncurl.

Useless sighed, unclenching his mandenta. He felt sore in every joint, empty and shaken. _It was there. It was there and it was eating me. I almost died. It came and I was going to die. It came and then it went away!_ It was gone, the flames just went out, gone. Something was wrong, something wasn't the same anymore. His wings shivered less, then stilled. His seized joints loosened a little.

Pariah kicked him again. "Are you in there?"

Slowly, sorely, Useless uncurled. "Yeah, I'm ... here."

"What was that about?" Pariah asked, raw-wing nervous and constantly glancing between her vents at the pipe thicket.

"It just went off ... and then it stopped," Useless said thickly as he stood up. He felt numb, stupid ... useless.

"Stopped? Only because I distracted you," Pariah said, folding her arms. "We'd better get out of here before Honeycream decides that landslide wasn't natural."

"That was you?" Gloryhog gagged. Pariah tried to shrug, nod and roll her head all at once.

"Err ... excuse me?" Faintheart called. Useless looked at him blankly. "Deadjet is dying."

"Good riddance," Gloryhog sneered. "Let's get out of here."

"Shut up," Useless sighed, brushing his wings down more for comfort than cleanliness. "I'm fine, Pariah. I - it's just been a while since I could use that." Then he saw what had changed. His hands, unsheathed of flame, were still quite blue. Faded, yes, and scuffed and scraped, but a clear azure showed through the dents and the peeling, seeping through the long-drear grey. He looked down, and at his wings - quite blue. Even the fine tracing of brighter teal was there, the leaping etchings licking their way up from wrist to elbow.

He turned to Pariah, and saw her dingy brownishness had darkened nearly into maroon, white trim and black highlights gaining gloss on limbs and wings. Past her, he saw Sunbeam, dawn-gold and sunset-orange as he'd been dipped in sky, and Faintheart, more platinum than pale, dark-faced, dark-handed.

Then he turned back, and looked down at Gloryhog, dimmer and faded than when he'd first seen him, his highlights peeling and his iridescent blue almost black.

"Who's in command here?" Useless asked softly.

"You are," Gloryhog replied, lowering his wings and pulling them back.

"You are ... who?" Useless said sweetly, spreading his wings out until the joints almost popped.

Gloryhog sneered, a sparkle in his optic. "You are ... Useless."

"I am not!"

Pariah elbowed him in the costa. "Stop playing commander and lieutenant and let's get moving. We need to get _out_ of here."

"We _are_ out," Useless replied.

"No, I mean away from this base, before Honeycream comes back!"

"He doesn't have a plan," Gloryhog said spitefully, pulling himself upright, back still pressed against the base door. "He never had a plan."

"Shut up, 'hog!" Useless snapped. "I _do_ have a plan. We're going to Lantern City."

"How?" Pariah asked.

"We can't fly," Gloryhog pointed out. "We don't have enough fuel."

"Not to fly," Useless agreed. "We'll walk."

"What? All that way?" Pariah yelped.

"Well, got a better idea?" Useless asked them both bluntly. She subsided. Gloryhog looked away.

"What about Deadjet?" Sunbeam asked. Useless wondered why he hadn't sidled up the way he usually did. "Faintheart says he's dying."

"So?" Gloryhog asked. "He's perfectly suited for it."

Useless frowned at that. The idea of just dumping Deadjet, who'd been of so much use to them so far, seemed ... not right. "No, we're taking him."

"We can't carry him," Gloryhog said, and Useless had to admit he was right, albeit silently. "Besides, why take him? A good Decepticon never carries dead weight!"

"Oh, forget that rubbish!" Useless snapped. "We've all tried to be good Decepticons, and look where it got us! Here! In the middle of nowhere, with barely any energon, no guns, no base, no nothing." Gloryhog looked away. "Do you know what we do have? Do you?"

"Nothing," Gloryhog mumbled.

"No!" Useless shouted, hearing his own voice echo. "We have a team. We're weak, yes, we're all weaklings and failures. On our own, we're hopeless. But we've gotten this far - we got here because Deadjet knew the way, and we had your confidence, and Pariah to yell at us when we got distracted, and me to push, and - and - we're Seekers and we're six and we make two Wings, and a jet can't fly without two wings."

Pariah actually laughed. Useless glared at her, fuming. "That was pretty useless," she said with a smirk.

"I liked it," Sunbeam said, finally sidling up to him. "I thought it was pretty, Useless."

"I'm not useless," he said. "Let's stop being stupid and weak. Let's stop trying to be good Decepticons and failing because we're not strong enough. Let's just get out of here alive, by whatever means necessary. Isn't _that_ what being the best Decepticon is? Life, by any means?"

"I'm in," Pariah said with a shrug.

"Me too," added Sunbeam, although he barely needed to.

"I'll go with you," said Faintheart, although he was addressing Pariah.

Useless turned to Gloryhog. "Well," he asked, "are you in?"

Gloryhog hunched, wings stiff, staring down at his pedes.

Useless extended a hand to him. "Come on," he said softly. "Four is good, but five is better."

"You've got Deadjet," Gloryhog replied sullenly.

"I want you to come with us," Useless said. "I need a lieutenant."

"Forget the power-games!" Pariah interrupted. "Are we going to leave Deadjet to die or not? Because if we aren't, we need to do something _now_."

"Well, what's wrong with him?" Useless asked.

"He's out of fuel," Faintheart called, still standing over the corpselike jet.

"He must've drunk all his allowance long ago," Pariah said thoughtfully.

Useless nodded, agreeing. "Yes ... but we still have fuel."

" _What?_ " Pariah and Gloryhog yelled at once.

"I'm not giving him my fuel!" Sunbeam exclaimed, startled.

"Me neither!" said Faintheart.

"There are two options here," Useless said, as firmly as he could, fixing Gloryhog with a look. "Either we rip Gloryhog's head off and give his fuel to Deadjet ... or we share."

" _What?_ " screamed Gloryhog.

" _Share?_ " exclaimed Pariah at the same moment. "What do you think we are, Autobots?"

"Yes, share!" Useless shouted, waving his hands for emphasis. "I told you, we're stronger as a group, and the more of us there are, the stronger we'll be. With Deadjet or Gloryhog, we'll be five, but with both, we're six, and six is strong. I say we divide up our fuel reserves equally, then we'll all make it to the City of Lanterns together!"

"Or starve in the attempt," Pariah retorted. "Sharing is _weak_."

"If we don't share, we'll either waste energon trying to kill Gloryhog -"

"You've wasted enough energon doing that already," Pariah interrupted.

" - or we walk out of here a four. When did you ever hear about _four_ Seekers doing something and surviving?"

There was a long pause. Useless looked from face to face, seeking a response. "Well? Are we six or are we four?"

Sunbeam held out a hand. "I'll do it if you will."

Faintheart looked at Deadjet, then at Pariah. "I'm in if Pariah is."

Pariah looked at Gloryhog. "I'll do it if he does."

"Gloryhog?" Useless asked.

"Just - just one thing," the darker Seeker said. "If I do this ... you call me by my _real_ name."

"Will you do the same for me?" Useless asked.

"Yes," Gloryhog nodded. "I'll tell all my friends in the officer's mess your real name."

"You - "

"I'm _in_."   
  


* * *

 

On top of the scarp, hidden below the broken towers, Misdemeanour punched her hands together until the space rang and Brickhouse winced at the sound.

"A good speech, a good speech!" she chuckled to herself. She'd barely stopped laughing in delight since she saw the fight start, and picked up all that followed on the emergency transceiver's parabolic microphone. "Five of my rejects, five for the Empire! Brick, this is fantastic! And they did it all by themselves! Not a poke or a prod from us."

Brickhouse shrugged. "Honeycream's still down there somewhere. They can't reach the City of Lanterns before night."

"They'll make it," Misdemeanour beamed.

"You're going to interfere?" Brickhouse asked, sounding worried.

Misdemeanour cocked her head. "Well, we'll see what they do."   
  


* * *

 

"So, how do we trade fuel?" Pariah asked.

"We ... err ... " Useless faltered. "Smelt."

"Serial chain fuel lines. Internal pressure will do the rest," Faintheart offered.

"You can do that?" Useless asked quickly, before Gloryhog could start up again.

Faintheart cringed. "Do I have to?"

" _Yes!_ " Pariah and Useless hollered together.

"I _hate_ being a tech," the Hunter whined, but poked Deadjet's torso until his canopy opened. Grimacing, he gingerly probed inside and pulled out two narrow tubes. "Who do I..."

"I'll go first," Useless said as firmly as he could. Pariah rolled her head back in exasperation, and flicked her wings rudely. Useless opened his cockpit for Faintheart, who looked at his innards with such queasiness Useless had to find the tubes himself. He held them out to Faintheart.

"If I connect you to him, he'll just drain everything out of you," the Hunter said. "We need to connect in serial chain. Everyone in a loop."

"Ugh," Pariah grunted, but stepped up and offered her tubes. Sunbeam followed. Faintheart passed Deadjet's tubes to Useless, who stood holding them with an unpleasant feeling in his tanks as Faintheart pulled his own cabling out.

"Pinch down on your cables, or the pressure drop will make the fuel pour out ... urgh ... onto the ground." Faintheart said rather distantly. Useless pinched both cables shut and waited as Faintheart connected one of his pipes to one of his own, then Useless' free cable to one of Pariah's, and her free cable to Sunbeam, who was left standing with an unconnected cable. Faintheart, still holding his free cable shut in one hand, got Deadjet's in his other hand. He managed to connect one to his free cable with some fumbling, then pinched down hard on Deadjet's free cable. "Urgh. If ... Sunbeam, keep your free cable shut, and then let go of all the others."

Useless left go, and immediately felt the pressure in his fuel tank change. Fuel suddenly started to rush out of his tank, gurgling down the tubes into Deadjet. Pariah looked woozy. Sunbeam swayed slightly, but kept a firm grip on his free cable.

"Come on, Gloryhog," Useless ordered.

Scowling bitterly, Gloryhog stepped into the circle and held his tubes out to Faintheart, not looking at Useless. The Hunter connected them up, one to Sunbeam and one to Deadjet.

Useless felt fuel rush _in_. "You smelt-chip," he exclaimed. "You had more fuel than the rest of us together!" The fuel was still coming in.

"Full tank and a half," Gloryhog sulked. "I'm worth more."

"We're all worth nothing here," Sunbeam said mildly.

"Well, you said you'd buy him a drink," Pariah snickered.

"For Deadjet, maybe, not a whole leaking round," Gloryhog grumbled. Useless felt the fuel-flow stop. Faintheart waited a second and then disconnected the pipes.

" _Aaaargh!_ " Deadjet groaned. "My _head_."

"Your head? Your _tank_ , more like," Pariah chuckled, tapping his torso. The dark Hunter sat up, optics brightening to a full red glow.

"What happened?" he asked woozily.

"Fuel transfusion," Faintheart replied.

"We're leaving," Useless said flatly. "Now."

Deadjet levered himself up, then wobbled. Faintheart grabbed his arm and heaved him up. "Why aren't I dead?"

"We shared fuel," Pariah told him. "Move. Walk. That way." She pointed towards the spatter of lights.

"Walk?" Deadjet shook his wings out. Dust spilled from his turbofans. "Walk! Never thought of that."

"Walk. Now." Useless grabbed one elbow, Gloryhog grabbed the other and they pulled the groggy Hunter onto the path and down the slope, the others skidding and hurrying behind them.   
  


* * *

 

Misdemeanour almost fell over laughing. Steadying herself, she punched air and jumped up and down for joy.

" _Six!_ And someone _finally_ got Deadjet to move!" She grabbed Brickhouse and danced around him. "Six Seekers! Two fine Wings for the Empire!"

"We expected _some_ to survive," Brickhouse protested.

"Yes, but not six. Three at most, and not Faintheart or Sunbeam."

"No loss," the big Hunter rumbled.

Misdemeanour kicked him in the shin. "Just because you were the only one from your intake to survive ... oh, just keep your optics out for Honeycream."

"Where's he gone?" Brickhouse wondered in the voice of doom.   
  


* * *

 

"Equality is _not_ Decepticonly," Pariah grumbled as they slithered down the slope, scree and debris skidding under their afterburners. Overhead, Homestar was dipping towards the horizon, and the plain turned from blue-grey to purple. In the distance, the lamps of Lantern City glowed brightly in the shadow of its hills.

" _Dying_ is not Decepticonly," Useless argued.

"Saving dying idiots isn't Decepticonly either," Gloryhog replied, skidding down to walk beside Useless.

"I'll remember that," Deadjet said as he came down behind them, Faintheart at his back. "If I see you dying, I'll say, 'remember what he said?'"

"I liked you better when you were quiet," Gloryhog grumbled.

"Oh, be quiet, 'hog," Useless said with a smirk. The slope flattened out into a broad, shallow bank of junk here, and they picked their way over it cautiously. Useless worried about mines but nothing registered on their sensors.

"You said you'd use my proper name!" Gloryhog protested, edging cautiously across a shifting heap of broken wall-panels.

"You haven't told me what it is," Useless reminded him, perching on a ceiling-girder bent into an arch to look out for Honeycream.

"You haven't told me yours."

"You first."

"Idiots," Pariah grumbled, kicking loose nuts and bolts out of her path and sending them skittering down the edge of the broken wall she was walking along the top of. " _My_ proper name is Forcebomber."

"I've always been Sunbeam," called a voice from below and ahead.

"You told us before," Useless reminded him, jumping down from the girder and walking swiftly down an alley of pipes. "I liked Pariah better."

"What? Why?" She skidded down the edge of the wall and onto an old floor, still mostly intact. Faintheart climbed down behind her. Deadjet picked his way up between them, walking along a shattered roadway support trestle. His rust-spots weren't improving but his hull was darkening towards a sleek black.

"It's different," Useless replied, climbing up the broken edge of the pillar to join them as they crossed the old floor and went down a wobbling ramp. "Everyone's a bomber-this or a wing-that or a something-sky. Pariah's different."

"Eeeh. I bet you're something really generic," Pariah said. They had come down into an old courtyard or large room with shattered walls all around. The evening sun glowed on the eastern horizon, red and huge, turning the east ridge into a wall of dusky purple shadows. Gloryhog stood in a break in the wall, helping Sunbeam up. "Something like ... Stormwind, or Thundercloud, or Skywing."

"Skywing?" Gloryhog laughed. They walked through the broken yard's great arched door, out onto a platform at the top of a monumental flight of stairs. The failing light of day turned it golden and orange, and they all stopped to stand and bask in the warm light. "Who's called Skywing? That'd be like being called, err, Airwind, or Skyflier."

"Knew a Windling called Skywing once," Deadjet rumbled as they started down the stairs, shaking the steps with his heavy tread. "Hated his circuits. Broke his back."

"He did?" Sunbeam asked.

"I did," Deadjet smirked.

"Oh. Well, what is your name?" Sunbeam asked Useless from the bottom of the stairs.

Useless shook his head. "Gloryhog first."

"Rust-face," Gloryhog muttered, picking his way over a fallen statue.

"Odd name," Useless teased, climbing up a tilting lantern-post to take a look around. Below the flight of stairs the ground broke into a series of terraces, roofs of fallen buildings and sections of shattered roadways. It would take them until sunset at least to reach the plain proper, and then it would be long march across the open expanse of broken skyway-trestles towards the twinkling in the distance, now appearing as star-decked towers and as pools of swimming lights - the lamps of Lantern City, burning like a beacon in the night.   
  


* * *

 

Misdemeanour could hardly stand still. Abandoning the emergency transceiver, she jogged along the western ridge, following the progress of her ex-rejects as they picked their way through the shells of buildings, climbing along pipes and sliding down towers, crawling like insecticons across the broad back of an unstable stretch of road. Brickhouse followed patiently, watching the plain more than those who travelled it.

As the rejects came to the end of the broken land and the beginning of the skyway foundations, Misdemeanour hopped up on the base of a broken column to stand, hands on her hips, wings spread wide, and laugh a full, long laugh.

"What good little survivors they are!" she crowed. "They didn't try to fly, they didn't go back inside, they didn't seek orders, they just went for it."

"They refuelled Deadjet," Brickhouse pointed out. "Waste of fuel."

"He's no more waste of fuel than the rest of them," Misdemeanour replied prickily. "He survived this long, and I'll bet you my right pede that it was him that got them out of there."

"He needed them to get him out," Brickhouse responded.

"And they needed him. Since when did one Seeker do as well as three?" Misdemeanour asked him. He shrugged. "His speech-making needs work, but Useless was right - a jet does fly better with two wings." She smiled down into the valley. "Great Megatron bless 'em, the little wonders, I think they're going to make it."

Brickhouse came up beside her, head and shoulders over her even on her perch, and pointed wordlessly down towards a speck of gold and ivory skimming down the side of the eastern ridge, heading towards the six rejects.

"No!" Misdemeanour raged. "No! He will _not_ have them!"

"We can't stop him."

"He'll kill them! Not my rejects! Not when they're so close! I won't let it happen!"

"You can't kill him!"

"Don't you 'can't' me! I've killed worse things than Honeycream!"

"But - "

"No buts! No can'ts! You are going assist me in bringing down Honeycream, or Great Megatron help me I'll do it alone."

Brickhouse looked at her mournfully. "I prefer being alive."

"Coward!" She turned back to the valley, optic bar flame-bright with rage. "I am not afraid of him!" She leapt from her post, transforming and swooping down the western ridge on a tail of furious fire.   
  


* * *

 

Night was falling fast. Homestar was barely a red glow on the eastern ridge, the base and slope invisible in purple shadows, and the west ridge dimmed through a red-gold crest to deep violet flanks. The ground was more level and stable amongst the skyway supports. Pillars and trestles still stuck up from the ground, turning the area into a forest of uprights, broken girders lying felled and forgotten between them. The skyway itself seemed to have been rolled up and taken away.

"So, I was sitting there, drinking energon with the Lord High Commander, and he turned to me and he said -"

"'Who the smelt are you?'" Useless interrupted. Gloryhog scowled at him, ignoring the laughter.

"You don't know the Lord High Commander," Faintheart said.

"I heard he feeds on life-force," Sunbeam commented, catching up to Useless. Useless was glad Sunbeam had stopped clinging to his elbow, but the yellow Seeker still kept close. "I heard he has special ultra-hard mandenta for chewing Autobot laser-cores."

"I saw him once," Faintheart said, still keeping close to Pariah's side. "In the distance, just for a moment or two."

"What's he like?" Pariah asked, walking a wingspan to Useless' right. "Is he really twice as big as Hunter?"

"I heard he's so big that when he walks the ground shakes," Useless said.

"I heard he can see the future," Gloryhog commented, edging up between Useless and Pariah.

"I heard he's immortal," Deadjet said, walking on Useless' left, on the other side of Sunbeam. "He took his life-force out and keeps it in a box, and that box is hidden somewhere in Darkmount."

"That's impossible," Pariah objected, "nobody can do that. Besides, Shockwave would've found it."

"Everyone knows Shockwave's a revenant," Gloryhog said airily.

"I didn't say it was true. I just said I heard it," Deadjet replied.

"Well, was he that big?" Pariah asked.

"No," said Faintheart. "He was bigger."

"Hey, Deadjet," Useless called, "what's your real name?"

There was a long pause as they trudged between the pillars, kicking bits of scrap to and fro.

"Embarrassing," Deadjet finally replied.

"That's a funny name," Sunbeam said.

"No. My real name is ... urgh. It's Midnight Stampede," Deadjet groaned.

There was a silence of consideration.

"Midnight ... Stampede?" Gloryhog half asked, half tasting the word.

"Yeah," Deadjet replied. "Horrible, isn't it?"

"Deadjet is _definitely_ better," Pariah said, nodded firmly.

"Very," Deadjet agreed.

"Who came up with _that_ as a name?" Useless had to ask.

"I did," Deadjet replied. "Picked it in front of Vector Sigma. Idiot. After I picked it, it stuck. Ugh."

"I -" Pariah started, and then stopped.

All of them stopped and looked east. A golden and ivory jet was flying towards them, low, barely above the level of the pillars.

" _Honeycream!_ " Pariah gasped.

"Don't look at his face!" Gloryhog screamed.

"Scatter!" Useless ordered, grabbing Sunbeam and looking for cover, but it was too late. Even as they moved, the Seeker transformed and landed amongst them, turning around to grace them all with a smile of warmth and comfort.

Useless' body turned to lead, but it didn't matter. They were safe, after all, so completely safe. He loosened his grip on Sunbeam's arm. Everything was safe, warm, bright. His sight, his thoughts, his mind was consumed by the golden-white smile, the golden-white light. It was like falling up into the sun, like flying into the warmest, brightest midday sky. It was wonderful -

" _Honeycream! Die!_ "

It was gone.

Honeycream's light vanished. Useless caught a glimpse of Gloryhog diving for cover, of Pariah and Faintheart throwing themselves flat on the ground as a streak of black and purple collided with Honeycream in a flying kick that carried the bigger Seeker ten hister. Honeycream's hand whipped like a severed tensor, slicing across Misdemeanour's thigh, and the Windling folded, striking out with her baton and cracking Honeycream across the face. The knife whipped out again and her elbow suddenly went loose, tensors lashing through the slash in her armour, baton-hand hanging limp at her side. She tried to swap the baton to her other hand, but too slow - the knife-hand came up, the slick blade carving up her side, point slicing deep into her torso. Misdemeanour stilled, folded over, fell sideways and collapsed to the ground. Before Useless had time to more than turn to see, Honeycream was picking himself up. Mild-faced, he kicked Misdemeanour away and turned back to the rejects. Useless took a step backwards, trying to shield his optics, but it was already too late.

Honeycream smiled, and the world was nothing but sweetness and light.

Useless stumbled forwards, towards the wonderful smile and the wonderful light. He still had his hand on Sunbeam's arm. He heard Pariah stumbling beside him, Faintheart behind her, Deadjet trailing ... the light of Honeycream's smile washed over him. He was almost close enough to touch it. He fell again into that marvellous sun, golden and white, and felt a sick, dark, disgusting rush of horror and fear burst up inside him.

Useless blinked. Faintheart screamed. Pariah took a step backwards. Out of the corner of his optic, Useless saw Gloryhog on his knees, fists clenched, wings stretched until they curved with strain and a blaze of hatred and loathing in his optics, the mirror - the _source_ \- of the revulsion churning inside him.

Honeycream's smile twitched, a faint essence of sadness and bemusement entering it, giving the soft warm light a tragedy like a final sunset. He saw Gloryhog and something flickered in his soft, smiling optics. The knife-hand moved.

Sunbeam smiled.

Honeycream vanished in a burst of light like autumn sunset outshone by the fiercest summer noon. The golden-white Seeker flung an arm over his optics, trying to shield himself from a smile more brilliant and more terrible than his own. Useless staggered backwards, letting go of Sunbeam, left optic burst-blinded. He could still feel Gloryhog's sick, dark hatred boiling inside him, spilling over into rage, but the tatters of Honeycream's light still danced in his head, clotting his thoughts with cloying sweetness.

Honeycream reappeared, glowing with heat as well as his embracing light, and he smiled, but his light swept over them weak and confused, blinded by Sunbeam's fiery smile. At Useless' side, Sunbeam sank to the ground with a sigh, exhausted by his power. A glance showed Gloryhog had fallen onto his side, curled up in dark hatred.

The golden-white Seeker still came forward, swinging his knife at shadows. Useless heard Faintheart whimper and fall back. Still he could do nothing. Even blind, the smile was a gravity of light, sucking him in, pulling with thick warmth until he was meshed and drowning in softness. Deadjet stumbled and Honeycream's head turned, seeking the sound. He darted forwards as if he were made of light and not metal. Honeycream collided with the Hunter, slashed with his knife - bemused and blinded, Deadjet fell backwards - the knife-hand rose to strike - Pariah's hand shot out.

A dark thing passed from her hand, dashed across the space and hit Honeycream in the elbow. Honeycream's arm suddenly shrank into the darkness, dropping the knife as his hand vanished, body yanked towards it. His smile broke into confusion. Air shuddered and the black point swallowed itself.

Honeycream staggered, patting bemusedly at the severed stump of his shoulder. He kicked Deadjet aside, turning the full force of his smile on Pariah as he stooped for his knife. She buckled at the knees, stumbled forwards and fell. Useless, behind her, was caught in that raging light. His head felt full to bursting with light and warmth, his brain-module melting into goo. There was nothing but brightness, warmth and light drawing him in. He tried to step forwards, stumbled on Sunbeam, then caught a flicker of movement from Deadjet.

Darkness roared, the sound of thousands of bodies moving, deep shadows of violet and of ultramarine passed in between them, over them, through them. The air was full of stamping, screaming, the shaking of shields, the crash of weapons into unarmoured torsos. Honeycream stood enveloped, shimmering dimly amongst the dark stampede, and even as it came it began to fade.

Warm, cloying light began to blossom again. He reached for the knife.

" _No!_ " Useless lunged for Honeycream before the darkness could fade, reaching for the rogue with hands that carved through air that was heavy, yielding, tearing.

The blue flames blasted into being all around him. Honeycream's wings flicked in surprise, his muffled light seeking to rise again, but the soft light wouldn't shine through the ball of blue flames around Useless' body. He charged Honeycream, grabbing him, dragging him into the fire.

Honeycream screamed, voice high and thin and sweet and aching, blue flames burning frost across his body, metal creaking and cracking and shattering. The searing cold crisped his wings, cracked them. Honeycream hit Useless in the face, and Useless was surprised how weak he was. He wrapped his arms around Honeycream, pinning the struggling rogue, and the flames enveloped them both, the fireball flaring and rising into a pillar, a tower that roared up to the clouds. Ice fell from the air, frost littered the ground and the Seekers. At their feet, the knife shattered. The air froze. The ground froze. Honeycream froze. The smile and the light were broken.

Honeycream twisted, cracked, and froze into death.

The blue flame staggered, ragged, blaring and billowing like tattered sails. Useless unlocked his arms from a broken torso topped by a face of frozen pain. His optics darkened, his body folded up at the joints, and he fell sideways into exhausted darkness.   
  


* * *

 

Useless floated in a dark place, filled with the thundering ethereal bodies of Deadjet's midnight stampede. A familiar energy called to him, drawing him upwards ... He reactivated to find Faintheart leaning over him, one hand on his forehead and one hand on his chest.

"Well, you're not dead!" Pariah exclaimed in mock-surprise.

"No," Useless said, sitting up. "Is _he?_ "

Pariah stood aside.

Honeycream stood dead still, face still screaming, grey body shimmering with ice.

"Thank Primus he's not smiling," Useless sighed. Pariah helped him to his feet. Sunbeam was instantly at his side, helping him brush down his wings.

"Misdemeanour?" Useless croaked.

"She's still alive," Gloryhog called from behind them. Useless turned. Gloryhog and Deadjet were bent over the fallen Windling. "She's leaking all over the place though."

"Let me see," Faintheart said, picking his way over. Useless watched as the pale Hunter laid hands upon the base commander with a look of concentration on his face. A pale light shone inside Misdemeanour's wounds and she shuddered. The energon leak in her side oozed, dripped, and then ceased. Her optics gained a dim redness, then a glow. She moved weakly and tried to sit up.

"Smelt!" Useless exclaimed. "You're a blasted _healer!_ "

"I didn't ask for it," Faintheart shrugged meekly.

"Faintheart! More like Swanheart!" Gloryhog mocked. Pariah just shook her head.

"Actually, my proper name is Sterling," the pale Hunter said, standing up. Deadjet rose with him, holding Misdemeanour in his arms. Useless turned away to glare at the dead rogue.

"Let's remember our first victory the way _good_ Decepticons do," he said, voice firm with determination.

"Yuck," grimaced Faintheart, but Useless ignored that. He strode up to the frozen body, seized its head in both hands and twisted hard.

Honeycream's neck turned with a wrenching and a splitting and ripping of cables and metal, then broke completely. Useless lifted the head of the rogue, their trophy, and raised it with a smile. Behind him, Gloryhog hollered victoriously, and Pariah whooped. Sunbeam smiled, just a little.

Behind him, Misdemeanour uttered a small, triumphant hiss.

Useless tucked their trophy under his arm as Gloryhog walked over. He felt Sunbeam close at his elbow, quiet in loyal support.

"Well," said Gloryhog, "I guess that makes us a wing."

"I guess it does," Useless smiled. "Two wings. Whatever."

"By the way..." Gloryhog trailed a little bit. "Err ... _my_ name is Ultralife."

Useless held out a hand. "Salamander."

They shook hands, commander and lieutenant. Then, with the wounded commander unconscious in Deadjet's arms, the six Seekers turned towards the horizon and walked towards the ever-bright lights of the Lantern City.   
  


> _"Oh my sister, walk with me  
>  And share this dream of paradise  
> Through this unforgiving night  
> We will survive  
> As the Lantern City lights  
> Burn ever bright."_  
> Arena - _"The City of Lanterns"_


	4. Addenda

This story was an entry for Wayward's "Choose Your Own" Competition [under Mystery and Non-Show Characters]. Well, actually it was intended to be an entry for the "Write a Female Character" Competition last year, but I didn't start it until April, which was a tad late.

This fic is set about six million years ago, before Cybertron was blown out of orbit, hence there is sunlight and atmosphere. Also, on Cybertron, the sun rises in the west and sets in the east.

Ailerons: A hinged flap on the trailing edge of an aircraft wing, used to control banking or rolling movements.

Blart: A loud, rude-sounding noise.

Breem: Cybertronian time unit roughly equivalent to a minute. 1 breem is 8.3 minutes, Earth time.

Clinker: The waste-product of combustion.

Costa: Armour covering the region analogous to the human rib-area [i.e. the area of venting on a Seeker].

Cycle: Cybertronian time unit, in Earth equivalent somewhere between a minute and an hour. 1 cycle is 10 breems or 10,000 astroseconds long. In Earth time, this is 83 minutes.

Deluminate: To shed no light upon.

Diun: Cybertronian "long month", equivalent to something between a month and a year. 1 diun is about 8 and a half years, Earth time.

Gloam: Fading light.

Glossa: The airborne particle sensor array located in the lower jaw assembly of the standard Cybertronian head, analogous in position to the human tongue, and primary scent-sensor.

Hermeun: Alternative or antiquated name for Atalex [Sector 2].

Hister: Decepticon 'meter'; two paces of the standard-height Decepticon [approx 60 feet/18 metres].

Hunter: A subtype of Seeker, approximately a head taller than the standard type, equipped with heavier armour, more munitions and more fuel.

Isnegox: [trans. "black-bone fortress"] Decepticon outpost.

Joor: Cybertronian time unit, roughly equivalent to an hour. 1 joor is 5 cycles or 50 breems long. In Earth time, this is almost seven hours. Also megacycle .

Kilohister: Decepticon "kilometre"; 1000 hister [approx 11 miles/18 kilometres].

Kngaikra: [trans. "howling blizzard"] Decepticon outpost.

Kolkullis: [trans. "city retaining work-heat"] Decepticon city, capital of Sector 3.

Mandenta: The interlocking extensions of the upper mandibulary plate and lower mandible ridge, analogous in position to human teeth.

Mayhem: Decepticon military police.

Mede: [trans. "under many houses"] Decepticon remedial training station.

Microbreem: A Cybertron time-unit. One astrosecond is 1/1000th of a breem, or 0.498 seconds Earth-time. Also called a decicyle or astrosecond.

Neurochord: Main neural wiring lines connecting the head to the body.

Ossuary: A vault to house the bones or bodies of the dead.

Parabolic microphone: A dish-shaped antenna with a microphone in the middle, used for picking up sounds a considerable distance away.

Pedes: Supporting/balancing structure attached by hinges to the base of the leg of a Cybertronian, analogous in location to the human foot.

Peen-hammer: A hammer with a rounded or wedge-shaped head, used for bending or shaping metal.

Picomeds: Nanite-like mechanisms of subatomic size used for internal repairs.

Plainting: Expressing grief or sadness; complaining.

Polyhex: [trans. "many cities"] The Decepticon capital.

Praxis: Antiquated or alternative name for Praxihex [Sector 11], or referring specifically to eastern Praxihex.

Revenant: A Cybertronian zombie which has regained self-awareness.

Stonking: Massive, huge, extremely large. From 'stonk' meaning 'artillery barrage'.

Skyway: A Cybertronian mass-transit interstate roadway, raised on supports to a level high above the local habitation.

Unchamfered: Having edges where two or more planes meet at right-angles, without chamfering cuts.

Valvolux: The name of Sector 5 and its capital city.

Verdigris: Corroded copper.

Windling: A type of Seeker, slightly more than half the size of the normal type. Windlings are designed to be primarily gunners and air-to-ground strafing attackers.

Zenith: The point of the sky directly above an observer.

Zendralbron: [trans. "white-tiered city"] Major city in Kalis [Sector 6].


End file.
